Andrew MacKinlay: In his discussions with the Bank of England about regulation, has the Chancellor discussed, or will he discuss, the involvement of Lloyds TSB in the practice of "stripping"-laundering money from Iran via London into the United States-which has caused it to be fined more than $300 million as a preliminary fine, which ordinary people in the UK are having to pay as a consequence of their ownership of Lloyds TSB?

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He has a long record of standing up for the consumer in such matters. We were very pleased to be able to introduce measures to stop the practice of unrequested credit card cheques, and we continually keep under review how we can best protect our most vulnerable people.

George Osborne: Has the Chancellor seen the helpful comments of the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), whom he used to sit in the Cabinet with, who said yesterday:
	"the reason why this Pre-Budget Report has been so disappointing is that the Prime Minister used his constitutional authority as First Lord of the Treasury to ensure that no full account of our economic predicament was provided, no systematic reform of banking was promoted and no clear account of Labour's approach to closing the fiscal deficit was made"?
	The truth is that the Prime Minister and the Schools Secretary overruled the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sofa government is alive and well, in the form of a Chancellor who bears the impression of the last person who sat on him. Will he take this opportunity to demonstrate his independence and publish the overall departmental spending limit-not for the individual Departments; the overall number, which was leaked by us after the Budget and which he now has an opportunity to publish-after this pre-Budget report? Just answer that question, third time of asking.

Liam Fox: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his statement and for prior sight of it, although we read much of it this morning in the media. It is hard not to feel some sympathy for the Secretary of State, who I know to be personally very committed to our armed forces. However, despite the sweeteners, making cuts to our wider defence capability when we are fighting a war in Afghanistan only strengthens the perception that we have a Government who do not give a high priority to the armed forces.
	The Government who were willing to waste £12.4 billion on a pointless VAT cut when they had to salvage their own reputation do not seem to have the same resolve when it comes to the country's national security. The Ministry of Defence's internal instructions were clear: allow for standing military tasks and do not prejudge the strategic defence review; and there is to be no capability removal but some shaving off. In other words, this is about numbers not fleets.
	What will be the effect of the pre-Budget report on the MOD's core budget, given that the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that non-protected Departments in the settlement will have to bear cuts of 16 per cent. over three years? By how much does it increase the £6 billion black hole highlighted in the Gray report? Is it true that the new Chinook aircraft will be funded from the cancellation of the future medium helicopter capability programme, not from savings arising from cuts in the RAF's Tornado and Harrier fleets? If so, where has the £1 billion of savings from those cuts gone? What impact will the reduction in Tornado and Harrier squadrons have on the RAF force elements readiness strategy? What does the Secretary of State mean when he says that decisions on the make-up of our future forces will be taken later? Does the Treasury intend further cuts? Although more Chinooks will be welcome, we have to accept that we will not get them until 2013-12 years after we went to Afghanistan. Does that not indicate the sheer stupidity of the Government's decision to cut the helicopter budget by £1.4 billion in 2004? When we get the new Chinooks, will they have a standard US army fit or will they incorporate the Thales Julius cockpit upgrade being applied to current RAF aircraft?
	How will our submarines be protected following the withdrawal of the Nimrod MR2 next spring? How will the requirement for long-range rescue and maritime reconnaissance be provided once the Nimrods are gone? What aspects of Army training does the Secretary of State intend to reduce? Will he be specific about that? What implications does his statement have for the defence training review and RAF St. Athan? Why are we cutting minehunter capacity when tension in the Gulf is rising?
	The Secretary of State is well aware that our minehunter capability is one of the capabilities most valued by our US army allies. We need to ensure that we maintain that capacity at a time when there are rising fears and tensions about what Iran intends to do. There is a real possibility of the Gulf being mined, so will he think again about removing a minehunter at an extremely sensitive time? In particular, will he consider the impact that that will have on the confidence of our allies?
	There are many questions to be answered. The Secretary of State says nothing about the current carrier status and the possible downgrading of our facilities in Cyprus-again, that has been widely trailed in the media. The important thing for the House to consider is why cuts are being made to our defences at all. This is not about reprioritising spending for Afghanistan. He told us on television at the weekend that the Treasury reserve is paying, mostly, for the extra costs in Afghanistan. The Government say that they have maintained defence spending at about 2.5 per cent. of gross domestic product during their time in office, but that is only if spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is included. In other words, by their own definition, they are trying to fight wars on a peacetime budget. Our defences are being cut not as a response to a diminished threat-if anything, the threat is going up out there-or to a reassessment of our strategic needs, or in order to reshape our armed forces. A Government who have had four Defence Secretaries in four years, one of whom was part-time, and no defence review for 11 years are now cutting the capability because of their own catastrophic economic management.
	Overspent and over-borrowed, in a worse economic mess than most of our competitors, last out of recession and with a shrinking wealth creation sector, the Prime Minister in his bunker is still living out the fantasy of what a great Chancellor he was, while all the time his Secretaries of State are having to make real cuts to their departmental budgets. This is the end-the final pathetic chapter in the new Labour project. After 12 wasted years, in debt up to our eyeballs, barely able to finance the Government's borrowing and worried about our credit status, we are now having our national security cut as a consequence. Who is paying for the Government's incompetence? Our brave armed forces, at least until we get a general election, when the real culprits will pay.

Bob Ainsworth: I did explain to the hon. Gentleman-he knows the true facts-that no cuts in our budget are proposed this year. None whatsoever. We have enjoyed a steady rise in the defence budget that has made it 10 per cent. higher in real terms. He says repeatedly-I have heard it before-that we are fighting wars on a peacetime budget, but the Opposition supported our operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan and do not offer a single penny more for defence. He can go round all he likes trying to undo the public statements of the shadow Chancellor by ringing up members of the defence industry and saying, "It won't really apply," but the Opposition have to tell one story in public and the same story in private. The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) does not offer a single penny more for defence, despite his allegations.
	On the withdrawal of Nimrod, I do not take these decisions without consulting the Chief of the Air Staff and the First Sea Lord. Other platforms are capable of providing the maritime patrol responsibilities. They have done so before-they are Merlin and Hercules, and we can meet our obligations with those other platforms. We will continue to support the cost of current operations through the reserve, but it is quite ridiculous for the hon. Gentleman to suggest that the only thing that ought to pay for anything that is usable in current operations is the reserve. Of course we need Chinook in theatre in Afghanistan, but we will use Chinook elsewhere. Chinook is a considerable uplift in our helicopter capability not only for Afghanistan but for elsewhere, too.
	The hon. Gentleman has nothing to complain about. He offers no additional money for defence and he really should stop pretending that he does.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Thirty-two hon. and right hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. As the House knows, there is another statement to follow. I should like, as usual, to accommodate as many Members as possible but, to do so, short questions and-I gently say to the Secretary of State-short answers will be required.

Bob Ainsworth: Absolutely. I have had, as my hon. Friend will have had, repeated requests from troops. We know that there have been considerable improvements in personal kit and equipment for our operations in-theatre, but we want to train as we will be expected to fight. We have enough close-combat equipment to provide for our troops in-theatre, and overwhelmingly for their pre-deployment training before they go into theatre, but this package will allow people to get the kit and equipment that they will be using in pre-deployment training and in-theatre before they begin their pre-deployment training. They will therefore be able to train with it for longer, and thus be more familiar with it and more capable as a result.

Bob Ainsworth: The Government's position on the nuclear deterrent is clear. We consulted widely on the White Paper that we published in 2006, and our view has not changed. I do not think that any sensible person would say that we should not prioritise the kind of training needed for the current operations at the expense of lower priorities at this time. We have 9,500 people in-theatre and, as we have sadly found out, it is a very dangerous theatre of operation. That has to be our main priority and our main effort.

Bob Ainsworth: Look, difficult decisions have to be taken in order to prioritise the equipment programme. I heard a Conservative spokesman today describe how things might be different, but the Conservatives would have ordered the carrier, would not they? They would also surely-or would they?-have prioritised the things that we have prioritised, so if they are going to make the allegation that we did something wrong, they have to be prepared to spell out what they would have done differently, and they have singularly failed to do that.

James Gray: My constituents at RAF Lyneham will no doubt welcome the extra defensive aids suites for their C-130Js, and indeed the extra C-17, but it is very hard to imagine how, when they are fully stretched, as they are at the moment, they can possibly get any more out of the very limited C-130J fleet. Is it not time that the Secretary of State cancelled the A400M and the ridiculous closure of RAF Lyneham?

Bob Ainsworth: We will seek to do that, and that is in marked contrast to some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) about massive cuts in civilian headcount in the MOD which could, if not properly structured, lead to uniformed staff doing civilian jobs at increased cost, not at a saving. We will look at this, plan properly and consult our staff.

Yvette Cooper: With permission, I shall make a statement on the Employment White Paper and the consultation document on housing benefit that we are publishing today.
	Families across Britain have been affected by the worst global recession in living memory. We made clear last year our commitment to help people through the recession-through wider support for the economy, but through strong active labour market policies too. We set out £5 billion additional investment this year and next to help people back to work. We expanded the help in Jobcentre Plus, and set out funding for 300,000 youth job and training places and more apprenticeships. We also pressed on with welfare reforms to avoid the big increases in inactivity that we saw in past recessions.
	The claimant count for November stands at 1.64 million, and we expect it to rise further in the new year. The International Labour Organisation's measure of unemployment stands at 2.46 million. However, the action that we have taken has made a difference. It has kept unemployment lower than people expected, and lower than in previous recessions too. The claimant count is about 400,000 lower than predicted at the time of the Budget. Employment has not fallen as far as in previous downturns, despite the fact that the overall shock to the economy from the global recession has been greater, and the claimant count currently stands at about 5 per cent., compared with peaks of about 10 per cent. in the 1980s and 1990s.
	We need to do more, however. Previous recessions left deep scars, as those hit by long-term unemployment found it hard to get work even once the economy started growing again. In the 1990s, youth unemployment in particular kept rising for more than a year after the recession finished, and in the 1980s it rose for more than four years after the recession ended. At times, 350,000 young people were on the dole for more than a year.
	To prevent the recession from leaving permanent scars that could damage young people for many years, we believe that more, not less, help is needed as we move into recovery. We are setting out extra help for young people who have been most heavily affected by the recession. We already provide extra support for young people from day one of their claim, but we will now deliver a youth guarantee of work or training for every young person who has been on the dole for six months.
	To deliver that support, we will fund an extra 100,000 youth job and training opportunities, on top of the 300,000 extra youth opportunities we are already funding this year and next. Young people will be required to take up the help on offer as a condition of receiving benefit. That help will include expanding the future jobs fund, which is already supporting thousands of people in jobs that are good for them and their communities-sports coaches, housing officers and jobs in child care and energy efficiency. More jobs are planned, including hundreds of new jobs working with the police in the Met, jobs in the NHS, and jobs developing the national cycle network across the country.
	For 16 to 17-year-olds, we are making available further funding to subsidise 5,000 additional apprenticeship places, so that more young people can get invaluable work experience under their belt. We expect youth unemployment to keep increasing in the new year, but our aim is to work with employers across the country who also need to do their bit to get the youth claimant count falling. We aim to get it falling in the second half of next year.
	Older workers also need extra help, so we are announcing today plans to provide tailored support for the over-50s, including help to tackle age discrimination. We will also provide more help for those experiencing repeated short spells of unemployment and expand help from private sector recruitment agencies for professional workers. We also know that lots of people want to start their own business, so we will provide more help and advice to do so from day one of becoming unemployed, with a self-employment credit available from three months of unemployment.
	Ninety per cent. of those on jobseeker's allowance still leave it within 12 months, but for those who become long-term unemployed we are rolling out the innovative flexible new deal through which specialist providers deliver personal help, paid by their results. We will trial new ways to incentivise providers to help the hardest to reach, to ensure that contracts can be delivered in a way that is good value for the taxpayer as well. We are also determined to keep up the pace on welfare reform to pursue our long-term goal of full employment.
	This recession has not seen the big increase in inactivity that we saw in the '80s and '90s, when the number of people on long-term sickness benefits trebled. Today, the number of people on inactive benefits is about 375,000 lower than in 1997. Many people still need help with skills, finding child care or getting health support to ensure that they can work. Programmes such as the new deal for lone parents and pathways are already providing wide-ranging help to get people back to work. However, we want to go further, not just to help people into jobs but to support them into sustainable employment where they can progress up the skills ladder and balance work and family life.
	We will do more to fund travel and child care costs for jobseekers in part-time training and through jobcentres and outreach workers in schools to promote flexible and part-time opportunities for parents and carers. We are reforming and extending the work choice and access to work schemes, and introducing mental health co-ordinators to help thousands of people with mental health conditions back into employment.
	We are also setting out further measures to improve skills opportunities, including skills accounts and a single joint budget, to help the unemployed between my Department and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. With greater support come greater responsibilities, so from next year we are extending the new work capability assessment for those currently on incapacity benefit. We are also extending jobseeking requirements to lone parents with children aged over seven, but we want to go further, so we will also bring forward requirements for partners of benefit claimants to seek employment.
	We are bringing forward a comprehensive package to help people back to work, but we also need to ensure that people are better off in work. The introduction of the national minimum wage and tax credits means that most people see significant gains from moving into work, but we believe that it is right that work should be properly rewarded, so it is now time to introduce a guarantee that people are better off in work. In the longer term, we believe that that could be done through further significant benefit reform, such as a single working age benefit, but in the meantime we will introduce a new better off in work credit, which will guarantee that everyone who moves into work after being on benefit for six months or more will be at least £40 a week better off. We are also increasing the help for carers and parents who can work only for fewer than 16 hours because of their family responsibilities.
	The housing benefit consultation also includes proposals to let people keep their full housing benefit payments for three months after moving into work and for setting fixed awards for up to six months to remove some of the uncertainty that comes with going back to work. We are also consulting on removing some of the highest rents that are distorting the system in a way that is unfair.
	Lower than expected unemployment is already saving around £10 billion over the next five years on benefit spending alone, compared with Budget plans. It has also saved money within the £5 billion budget for helping people back to work, as fewer people than expected have reached six or 12 months' unemployment where the more intensive help is on offer. Those savings now allow us to spend £400 million over the next 18 months-£300 million of it on the young unemployed-to support today's announcements. That investment is helping families across Britain at a difficult time. It is also supporting young people at the very start of their working lives, keeping up welfare reform at a time when it is more important than ever, and helping the public finances. This Government believe that we need to help people at a tough time. We will not turn our backs on people who lose their jobs. We will keep supporting them, not just in the recession, but in the recovery.
	The White Paper and the housing benefit consultation set out a comprehensive package to help people back to work and ensure that they are better off in work. It sets out the next stage of benefit and welfare reform in pursuit of our goal to get 1 million more people in employment over the next five years. I commend this statement to the House.

Yvette Cooper: The kind response to that would be to suggest that the right hon. Lady does not understand her own policies-and certainly does not understand ours. Let me deal in turn with the points that she raised.
	The right hon. Lady talked about the level of youth unemployment. The youth claimant count for Great Britain in October was 462,000. In October 1992, in the last recession, it was 784,000. In October 1985, it was 980,000-more than twice as many young people on the dole as there are today. She says that we should judge her not on what she says, but on what she does, and we would certainly judge the Conservative party on what it did over 18 years in government.
	The right hon. Lady said that we are introducing Conservative policies on youth unemployment. Until September, she did not have any policies on youth unemployment. It was only when her noble Friend Lord Freud came up with a few that she had any policies at all. Even at that point, what was her policy for young people who have been unemployed for more than six months? It was not a guarantee of jobs or training-not at all. All she was offering was a bit of private sector help for young people. We are offering guaranteed jobs or training or work, but she would not fund that. She would not support our £5 billion additional investment.
	The right hon. Lady's policy is to oppose and abolish the future jobs fund, which is delivering more than 120,000 job opportunities for young people right across the country. The Conservative party wants to say to those 120,000 young people, "That's it; your job's gone." This Government are increasing the support we give to young people, not just from day one but throughout a young person's experience of unemployment or inactivity. We believe that they should have more support; we believe that they should have more help; and we are prepared to put more investment into it.
	We are prepared to put more investment into offering young people education and training places-for example, through the September guarantee, which is again something that the Conservative party opposes. The Conservatives oppose the extra investment in education and training places; they oppose the job opportunities; they want to turn their backs once again on young people right across the country because they simply do not care enough to be prepared to invest-money that is a saving for the future.
	The right hon. Lady also talked about the housing benefit measures. I did not hear her welcome proposals to include run-ons, for example, for people on housing benefit who are moving into work. I had hoped that she would support those proposals. We have said that there should be greater choice for tenants, so that their money may be paid to landlords, but we want to consult on whether there should be additional requirements, for example, on landlords to improve the condition of their properties as part of that. For the vast majority of tenants it is a good thing to have their money paid to them directly, as it increases their independence, but we want to look at how we can improve the private rented sector as well.
	Let me respond to the points raised about whether people are better off in work. The right hon. Lady will have seen-I hope-from the information that we have put out today that we have already given people big increases in additional support. For a family with one child and one earner in full-time work, the weekly minimum income guaranteed as a result of Government support and the minimum wage has gone up from £182 a week to £309 a week-a 28 per cent. increase. For a couple with no children over 25 in full-time work, the amount has gone up from £117 to £234 -a 50 per cent. real-terms increase.
	That is a substantial increase in support for people moving into work, through things such as the minimum wage, which the Conservative party opposed; through tax credits, which the Conservative party opposed; and through additional support for people. We think it right to ensure that there is a guarantee-a nice, clear, simple way of supporting people so that everyone is £40 a week better off. That is on top of the additional support that the Chancellor announced this week for free school meals, which helps in particular families who are concerned about in-work costs.
	I have set out today measures that expand support for young people and older people who are unemployed. They are designed to help tackle the unemployment problems that we face, but also to bring unemployment down further and faster than in previous recessions. We believe that active Governments should take such action rather than adopting the approach of the Conservatives, who want to roll back big government, leave people to sink or swim and abandon people to their fate, just as they did in the 1980s and 1990s. We will not allow that to happen again.

Yvette Cooper: My right hon. Friend is right. She has talked to me, and also to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, about the company in her constituency which is doing such great work to support young people and give them opportunities. Providing that start in life and that step on the career ladder involves providing training as well as work experience. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister will be happy to visit my right hon. Friend's constituency.

Steve Webb: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for providing me with a copy of her statement. It is a bit of a shopping list, but there are some good things on that shopping list. I am pleased that lone parents may be able to keep more of the wages that they are paid for small part-time jobs. We need to end the dichotomy between work and non-work: there are now far more grey areas, and the encouragement that the statement provides is welcome.
	I welcome the small increase in the carer's earnings allowance. It is probably not enough, but it is a step in the right direction. I also welcome the exploration of fixed housing benefit awards, which must be worth considering, and the U-turn on local housing allowance, an issue that I raised last week during Question Time. It is good that the Government have thought again.
	In relation to in-work benefits, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) raised the significant issue of what would happen after the six-month period. I accept that there will be transitional costs and the early costs of a new job, but I worry about what will happen after six months to someone whose mortgage or rent payments simply cannot be afforded on a modest wage. Will the Secretary of State tell us what she envisages? I understand that there have been pilots. What happened after six months to the people who could not then afford their mortgage payments, and do we need a more sustained way of helping people?
	The White Paper proposes that lone parents who are training can receive income support in the summer, but the Welfare Reform Act 2009 provided for the abolition of income support. I am a little hazy about how the two fit together.
	The Government are extending the work capability assessment to incapacity benefit recipients. In my view, it is currently having a very damaging effect on people receiving employment and support allowance, many of whom are being shunted on to jobseeker's allowance when they are not fit for work. The rate at which people are being transferred is much higher than was projected. What appraisal have the Government carried out of the current effect of the assessment, before applying it to a whole new group? I think that the issue will be filling all our postbags in the coming months and years if we do not get it right.
	As for the issue of high housing benefit for people in high-rent areas, I can see that this makes a bad newspaper headline, but if-especially in London-people in high-rent areas are shunted into low-rent areas, is there not a risk that family networks that can provide child care will be broken up, that children will be moved from their existing schools, and that ghettoes will be created when everyone in temporary accommodation ends up in bits of London where the rents are cheap? Is that really a good by-product of policy?
	Are we doing enough at the outset for the high-risk youth unemployed? Is it not the case that on day one of a claim it is possible to identify the high-risk groups, those with no qualifications and those in high-unemployment areas? In such cases, could we not intervene more intensively on day one?
	The White Paper talks of doing more to match people with family-friendly jobs in jobcentres. Many people say to me "When I went to the jobcentre I expected the staff to help me to find a job, but all that they said was 'There's the internet'." Is there not a gap between the rhetoric and the reality? It would be great to think that Jobcentre Plus will match people carefully with jobs and family-friendly employers, but is it not the case that they are having enough trouble just keeping up with the paperwork? Is there the necessary resource for us to do the good things that the Secretary of State wants to do?

Yvette Cooper: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, and I shall try to respond to each of his questions. I am grateful for his points on the carer's allowance and the support provided for people working for small numbers of hours. As we know, a lot of people cannot work for more than 16 hours, particularly those in families with caring responsibilities, and it is better for them to be able to work than not to be working, even if they can only work a small number of hours.
	In terms of what happens after six months in respect of the back-to-work credit, the evidence suggests that people do not drop out of work after the credit finishes-in any case, the vast majority of people are significantly better off in work. The addition of the credit not only guarantees that they will be £40 a week better off, but it gives them the clear and simple message that they will be better off by that amount when they might be concerned about housing benefit or the interaction between different benefits, which can be difficult to understand. This credit gives people the simple message that they will be £40 a week better off, and it allows them to get back into work so that they can build their confidence and understand that, in the future, they will still be better off in work than unemployed.
	The hon. Gentleman's point about mortgages is important. Some people will find themselves with unsustainable mortgages, perhaps taken out before the credit crunch began. For those people, we want to ensure that there is long-term help, if possible to get them back into a job that pays them enough to maintain their mortgage payments, but if not, to provide support to them via some of the mortgage rescue schemes or via housing associations and other bodies, so that we ensure that they have sustainable long-term housing finance as well. That matter obviously raises a wider range of issues to consider.
	Under the Welfare Reform Bill it is possible to remove income support, but that is not our intention at this time, because we need it for precisely the reasons the hon. Gentleman mentioned. We think there is a case for providing a single working age benefit and for undertaking much wider benefit reform in the future, but such reform must be undertaken in stages, which is why we are making individual changes through measures such as the reform of housing benefit.
	The hon. Gentleman raised concerns about the work capability assessment. We are reviewing it and we have been working on that with expert stakeholders and medical professionals. We are also closely monitoring the appeals process. We believe that some sensible changes and modifications can be made to the work capability assessment, and discussions on this issue are ongoing.
	In the White Paper, we refer to the additional assistance that we want to provide to those people on jobseeker's allowance who may be able to work but who may also have health conditions and therefore need some additional support in that context even though they are able to take up employment and work as well. We will want to consider that possibility as part of a review of the pathways programme.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the high sums of housing benefit and about high rents in some areas. We think it is right to look at the possibility of excluding the highest proportion of rents from the calculations. The rent officers used to do that under the old local reference rent scheme: they used to exclude some of both the highest and the lowest rents when working out their calculations. There is a second issue to consider: because of the wide areas within which the local housing allowance applies, the average in an area can be raised by the presence of some very high cost and expensive properties in certain neighbourhoods, and that ends up having an impact on nearby neighbourhoods. We think it is possible to exclude some of the highest rents that are distorting the system and leading to unfairness without jeopardising the existence of mixed communities, because it is right that we continue to support decent housing in mixed communities across London and many of our areas.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about what more we can do from the very first day of unemployment. Jobcentre Plus trials will be starting in his area and several others to give jobcentre advisers precisely the flexibility he was talking about, so that they are able to consider people very much as individuals in respect of what help they need and whether they should be fast-tracked to particular forms of support or additional help. Those trials will consider how we can enable jobcentres to work more flexibly. Jobcentres have done a fantastic job in the difficult period of the last 12 months by not only responding to the very big increase in the number of people coming through their doors but by helping people and getting people back into work, and by paying benefits on time. We should pay tribute to the immense amount of hard work done by many of the people in our jobcentres, and we want to give them more support so that they can do a better and more flexible job in future as well.

Anne Begg: I, too, welcome the three month run-on for housing benefit, because it is important in letting people settle down into jobs before there is any threat of their having their benefit taken from them. Did not my right hon. Friend say something in the White Paper about discussion as to whether housing benefit can be paid directly to landlords? I have been in correspondence with one of her colleagues about a local citizens advice bureau and the eviction of some of its clients because they have got chaotic lifestyles. They are drug addicts and they have been pleading for their housing benefit to be paid straight to their landlord. I would welcome such an approach.

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I know that she and others on the Select Committee have been examining this issue. Clearly it ought to be possible already for those with the most chaotic lifestyles to have their housing benefit paid directly to their landlord. We will be issuing new guidance very shortly to make that clearer for local authorities, although they should be doing more of this already. As part of the document, we are also consulting on giving tenants a wider choice to be able to have their rent paid directly to their landlords if they so choose. It is important that the choice should lie with the tenant, not simply with the landlord because that has been an important way of empowering tenants and giving them more choice, as opposed to simply paying the money directly to landlords. The other thing on which we want to consult as part of this proposal is whether there should be any conditions on the landlord where rents are paid directly to them. Such conditions could relate, for example, to the quality or the energy efficiency of the property, and we would like to seek people's views on whether that is the right thing to do.

Hilary Benn: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) sends his apologies to the House, because he is at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels, where important fisheries negotiations are taking place today. We all wish him well. May I also draw the House's attention to the publication today of the latest progress report on the implementation of Sir Michael Pitt's recommendations?
	I thank the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for their pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill that we published in April. The Bill that is now before us has benefited from their thorough and close examination, as well as from more than 650 responses to the public consultation. It is shorter than the original Bill, for reasons that the House will understand, but we remain committed to taking the other measures forward when time allows.
	As all too many Members in the Chamber will be aware, the origins of the Bill lie in the devastating floods of 2007. It is never possible to attribute one particular event to our changing climate, but what happened then was a stark reminder of our vulnerability to the force of nature. Important parts of the Bill owe a great deal to Sir Michael Pitt's "lessons learned" report. I am sure that the whole House would wish once again to express its thanks to Sir Michael for the work that he has done. We have responded to many of his recommendations.

Hilary Benn: With the greatest of pleasure. I know that I speak for all Members in the House in saying that we are full of admiration and respect for the outstanding work of the fire and rescue service, but also, to be honest, that of everybody who helps out in times of need and emergency. A lot of people owe a great deal to their skill and determination.
	Since the summer of 2007, we have completed 106 flood defence schemes protecting more than 63,800 additional homes in England, we have invested £60 million to help to tackle surface water flooding, and some 140,000 more people have signed up to receive flood warnings in England and Wales. In addition, we have set up the new flood forecasting centre-one of Sir Michael's recommendations-which provides a single forecast, including an extreme rainfall alert. During the floods in Cumbria, it played an important role in giving emergency responders early warning of heavy rainfall as well as expert advice on the risk of flooding. Thirty-six hours before the flooding occurred, the flood forecasting centre indicated a high risk of significant property flooding and a danger to life in Cumbria. That shows the benefit of this change.
	What we saw in Cumbria reminds us of the devastating effect that flooding has on homes, on businesses, on communities and, above all, on people's lives. Our sympathies go out to all those affected, as do our thanks to all those who responded with such selflessness and determination. Equally impressive has been the tremendous resolve of the communities affected to get back on their feet.
	The 2007 floods affected great swathes of the country, as many hon. Members here today know only too well-from Sheffield, Doncaster and Hull to many communities in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, the Thames valley and elsewhere. Thirteen lives were lost, 55,000 homes and businesses were affected, and £3 billion-worth of damage was done. For individuals, businesses and home owners, recovery is not quick. We know from previous flooding that getting back on one's feet can take many long, hard months.
	The rainfall in Cumbria was truly exceptional, and in 2007 very unusual, but this may not be the case in future, as climate change will make what are currently extreme events more frequent. Sea levels are also expected to rise. According to the most recent projections by the UK climate impacts programme, that rise could be 36 cm in London before the end of the century.

Hilary Benn: I agree with my hon. Friend. Particularly in Sheffield and Hull but also in many other places, surface water flooding was the problem. That is why one of the purposes of the Bill is to make it absolutely clear for the first time who has lead responsibility for taking account of the matter, which will be unitary or upper-tier authorities. They will bring together all the people responsible for the different drainage systems, private culverts and highways and byways that take water away.
	We must ensure that we do not add to the problem. I shall turn presently to sustainable urban drainage, and we have made a practical change to planning permission that does not cost any money. Previously, someone could pave tarmac and concrete over their front garden without needing to ask anybody. Now they have to apply for planning permission if they use non-permeable paving, but not if they put in place permeable paving. Front gardens tend by definition to drain off into roads. That is a very simple change that we have already put in place at no cost, and it shows that although the solution is about investment, it is also about how we approach the problem. Nobody took responsibility in the past, and if we put the Bill on the statute book we will ensure that somebody has responsibility in future.

Hilary Benn: I am going to make a little bit of progress.
	It is precisely because one in six homes in England is already at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea, or indeed surface water, that we cannot move every community away from flood risk. That is why we set out a rigorous test in planning policy statement 25. The expert advice of the Environment Agency on flood risk and new buildings is now followed in 98 per cent. of cases, according to the latest figures that I have. I think that shows that altering the guidance and requiring the agency to be consulted has had an impact.
	We can also do more to make individual properties resilient and resistant if the water gets in. A recent example of that was when homes and businesses in Appleby got through the flooding because of the Government grant funding that enabled 46 of them to buy and fit protection equipment. We expect to see more work of that type in future. The Bill defines risk, sensibly, as the combination of likelihood and consequence. The Bill will therefore encourage both resistance and resilience as ways of managing the consequences of flooding. That is important, because where properties are at risk we can also work with the insurance industry so that insurance cover remains widely available. Our agreement on a statement of principles with the Association of British Insurers is intended to do this. The ABI wants to see our record investment in flood defence-£2.15 billion in the current three-year period-and it also expects the Bill to help to overhaul how we better manage the rising risk from flooding. It has urged all of us to work together to ensure that the Bill becomes an Act as quickly as possible.
	One of the principal purposes of the Bill is to ensure that organisations know what bit of flood risk they are responsible for managing and that local people know that, too. So, part 1 of the Bill will enable a wider range of approaches to flood and coastal erosion risk management and clarify responsibilities for all sources of flooding. The Environment Agency will take a strategic role, including developing a national strategy for flood and coastal erosion risk in England, and a similar role in Wales will be taken by Welsh Ministers. County and unitary authorities will take the lead in ensuring the management of local flood risk and developing plans to deal with it. Resilience and other approaches that minimise the impact of flooding and coastal erosion will be an important part of the plan, and the Bill makes it clear that all authorities can use these as well as, of course, providing flood defences and flood warnings.

Nick Herbert: The whole House has seen on the television images of flooded landscapes, but as many hon. Members and the Secretary of State know, it is perhaps only when we see for ourselves the devastating effect of flooding on people's homes and businesses that we truly understand its impact. Man takes charge of so much nowadays that it is sobering to see the awesome force of nature that flooding represents.
	Nature's power was evident most recently with the flooding in Cumbria. Although it was inspiring to see the emergency services working so effectively, local communities coming together and people helping each other, that flooding was a timely reminder that it remains the primary duty of the state to ensure the security of the public whenever it can. That will increasingly mean ensuring our environmental security, which is ultimately what the Copenhagen summit is all about. Although we must try our best to secure a deal to mitigate greenhouse emissions, our climate is already changing. The adaptation agenda is just as important, as I said in my response to the Gracious Speech.
	The Bill is about enhancing our environmental security and adapting to climate change through better flood risk management. Ultimately, it is about protecting people and their homes. We must never forget the human consequences when we fail in that duty. One victim of the 2007 floods said:
	"It was horrendous when the flood arrived. Nobody knew what to do...There was sewage running through the house which caused an awful smell...there was water everywhere, so we had to wade through the street to find somewhere above water."
	That experience has been repeated in Cumbria, as hon. Members are only too aware.
	Nor must we forget the duty that we owe to help communities to recover from flooding when it occurs. The national media may move on, but communities such as those in Cockermouth, Keswick, Workington and Kendal have only just begun to rebuild their lives and move back into homes and businesses. We must ensure that political attention does not desert them in the months ahead. That is why I will be visiting the affected areas again later this week to meet displaced families who will be out of their homes for Christmas, and I know that the Secretary of State has done the same thing recently.
	I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House will want to continue to express their concern for the area, and that we will want to pay tribute to the ongoing clean-up and recovery efforts of local authorities and voluntary organisations, which are working hard to make Christmas bearable for the flood victims. There was unprecedented rainfall in Cumbria, but it is important to recognise the good work of the authorities, especially the Environment Agency, which were better prepared because they had learned the lessons of the Carlisle floods in 2005.

Nick Herbert: I take my hon. Friend's point. The Secretary of State alluded to the potentially catastrophic effects if a reservoir had been affected, and the same could be said of the impact on critical infrastructure, including the electricity system. Many of us will remember the images of the emergency services desperately trying to protect the sub-station. That is a lesson for us all, and I want to come to the issue of critical infrastructure in a moment.
	The Bill takes forward recommendations from the review into the 2007 floods by Sir Michael Pitt. It is now more than a year since the Pitt review reported, with a comprehensive set of more than 90 recommendations. The Conservative party supported those recommendations and we are glad that we have the opportunity to consider legislation to implement many of them. I have consistently urged the Government to introduce legislation, so we welcome the Flood and Water Management Bill.
	All Members will be aware that the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs suggested that the Government should wait until the opportunity arose to have a comprehensive flood and water Bill. However, my view-and, I think, that of most hon. Members-is that we should not delay implementing essential measures, and the Government were right to bring the Bill forward. The recent floods in Cumbria sealed that view. We will therefore work constructively with the Government to ensure that the Bill is strengthened and reaches the statute book as quickly as possible.
	There are some key measures in the Bill that Conservatives have called for and that we will seek to ensure are sufficiently clear and robust. First, the confusing and overlapping roles of central Government, agencies, local authorities and the emergency services, which were evident in the 2007 floods, must be brought to an end. The Chief Fire Officers Association described the "institutional confusion" that beleaguered the recovery effort then. The Pitt review called for people and organisations to be held to account and for simple structures and clear outcomes. We must have clearly defined responsibilities. We therefore welcome the provisions in the Bill to give the Environment Agency strategic oversight and to spell out in law that, in most cases, the lead local flood authority with clear responsibility for flood defence will be a unitary authority or county council. In fact, that is something that the Government first advocated nearly five years ago, in their "Making space for water" document.
	We also welcome the measures to improve urban drainage and create requirements for new developments to incorporate sustainable solutions. For too long there have been barriers to establishing such systems, which, as the Conservative party's quality of life review highlighted, have the potential to reduce flood risk from surface water. By requiring new development to focus on permeable paving, ponds and soakaways, we can help to respond to the pressures of climate change, which will lead to more spells of prolonged rainfall.
	We also welcome the emphasis on information sharing, so that local flood authorities can better co-ordinate their responses. We will want to ensure greater transparency on flood information, so that local households and businesses get the information that they deserve. We also support the provisions in the Bill on reservoir safety, although we must ensure that they are framed in a way that does not impose unnecessary burdens on owners of small reservoirs, many of which pose no risk to people at all as they are sited on agricultural land. That is an issue that we will need to attend to in Committee.
	We broadly support the provisions on infrastructure in part 2 of the Bill that require large projects to be open to competition, which has the potential to help reduce costs to water customers. We are particularly glad to see clause 42, which deals with the problems of charging for surface water drainage-the so-called rain tax-that have caused so much difficulty for scouts, guides, places of worship and other community groups, which were faced with unacceptably high bills. The oversight role of the regulator still needs to be looked at, but overall the proposal is welcome. Back in July, we called on the Government to give companies the discretion that they needed to protect such groups and ensure that new charges were properly monitored by Ofwat. It took Ministers a long time to act, but I am glad to have encouraged them, because they got there in the end and I congratulate them on that.
	There are, however, some aspects of the Bill on which we seek clarity from the Government. Some legitimate concerns have been raised by third parties about whether the Bill, in seeking better to co-ordinate the response to flood risk, is too centralising. The National Farmers Union, for instance, has argued that the Environment Agency's role is "power heavy" but "duty light". The Environment Agency gains a strategic oversight role for flood risk management, which is certainly right in principle, but in practice we must ensure that it is framed so as not to sideline local concerns. As the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee argued, a national strategy is important, but it must not come at the expense of local knowledge, not least because flooding is, in essence, local. The Committee warned against over-centralising measures, stating:
	"We are concerned that the draft Bill establishes a rigid vertical structure, which potentially precludes pragmatic cross-boundary area-based approaches that accommodate local people's views and knowledge."
	Flooding is a national concern, but it always impacts locally. That is why, for instance, local drainage boards are so important in harnessing local expertise and concern. It is therefore vital that we get clarity on how the national strategy will be drawn up and on how it will be approved. The Bill requires the Environment Agency to consult widely when drawing up the strategy, and requires the strategy to be laid before Parliament. Democratic oversight of the process will be crucial to public confidence, however, and ensuring accountability for such an important framework will be vital. We would therefore like Ministers to explain more about how they envisage the process of approval working. Will the EFRA Committee be able to scrutinise the strategy before it is agreed, for example?
	With regard to how the national strategy is applied, the Government need to be clearer about how it will fit in with local strategies devised by lead flood authorities. The Bill puts a responsibility on local authorities to develop their own local flood strategies, but it also requires those strategies to be consistent with the national strategy. In that case, how much discretion will local authorities have to diverge from the national strategy set by the Environment Agency?
	We also want further clarification on the measures in clause 38, which give the Environment Agency the responsibility to weigh up the competing interests of conservation and people's enjoyment of the environment, and the potentially harmful consequences of increased flooding or coastal erosion. That is a difficult balance to strike, but we must ensure that local people are involved throughout the decision-making process and that the process is fully accountable.
	We are also keen to consider in more detail schedule 1, which relates to the designation of features that could have a significant effect on flood management. The Bill enables the Environment Agency, a lead local flood authority, a district council or an internal drainage board to designate a structure if they believe that its existence or location affects a flood or coastal erosion risk. Following such a designation, the owner of the feature may not change it without the consent of the responsible authority. It is right that assets that could have a serious impact on flooding should be properly accounted for and managed responsibly, but we need to look closely at the implications of the Bill's drafting. Network Rail, for example, has raised concerns about the designation of its assets, and we will be keen to ensure that proportionality is maintained so that this process does not become complex or costly, and that an appeals procedure is in place.
	Beyond concerns over where the Bill might prove too centralising, we also seek clarity on the costs arising from certain provisions. We will seek more details from the Government of the costs that will fall on local authorities in taking on their new responsibilities, because that is worrying them. With council finances stretched, local authorities will need reassurance that additional duties can be afforded without increasing the burden on council tax payers.
	Similarly, we have questions on how the additional cost of maintaining sustainable urban drainage systems will be met. Ministers have said:
	"We recognise that longer term funding must be in place from around 2018, and are considering a number of options to address the funding of SUDS maintenance in the long term."
	They have also said:
	"The Department will ensure that any increased costs to local authorities are fully funded to avoid upward pressure on council tax."
	Despite assurances that medium-term costs will be covered by plans to transfer private sewers to water companies, it is by no means clear that that is the case. The Local Government Association has said that these assumptions are based on seven-year-old data from only 12 per cent. of local authorities, and so are hardly reliable. The provisions might also lead to water companies being hit twice: once for the cost of the sewer transfer and again for the long-term costs of maintaining sustainable urban drainage systems. These are sensible proposals to help to manage the risk of flooding posed by surface water drainage, but in the current economic climate, the Government need to give more detail on how they will be funded, rather than simply relying on historic and incomplete data, and on potential solutions that might emerge in the future.
	We welcome this legislation, but, in some respects, it does not go far enough. It will fall to a future Government to bring forward further legislation to cover those aspects that have not made it into this Bill. It was clear from the draft Bill, when it was published in April, that Ministers originally intended to legislate for elements of the Cave and Walker reviews into competition and affordability. The consultation paper said:
	"The UK Government and Welsh Assembly Government will each assess"
	the recommendations of the reviews. It went on:
	"Where they believe it necessary to legislate to implement any changes as a result of these reviews they each intend to do so as part of this Bill."
	But that has not been possible, not least because the Government started the reviews too late, and have therefore left themselves with no time.
	Many of Professor Cave's recommendations on abstraction trading, competition and legal separation will require legislation. Over a year after his interim report, which made a number of recommendations-accepted in full by Ministers-it is disappointing that this rare opportunity to legislate for them is being missed. The recently published Walker report contains a number of recommendations that link directly with the aims of this Bill, particularly the elements relating to efficiency, which could help to change the way people think about their water use and help to reduce the risk of the severe shortages that would require the temporary bans legislated for in the Bill. Referring to the consultation on the draft Bill, DEFRA implied that greater efficiency measures, including duties on companies, could be forthcoming in the Bill, but it will fall to future legislation to introduce them.
	The water industry is desperate for measures to tackle the rising problem of water debt, which the whole House should be concerned about. The problem disproportionately impacts on those low-income families who pay their bills and subsidise non-payers by £12 a year. Simple measures in the Walker report to provide for a named bill payer could have been introduced in this Bill, and would not have unduly slowed its progress or jeopardised the vital flooding measures.
	Such confusion firmly underlines the need for a new, joined-up approach to the water industry, which is why we are committed to introducing a White Paper to bring together the Cave and Walker proposals and take the opportunity of the current break in the regulatory cycle to make sensible changes to the way in which water companies are regulated, and put customers at the heart of the industry.
	We need to do more between floods, rather than just reacting to them when they happen. Reviewing our natural water flows and cycles, and slowing water down, will help to reduce flood risk. We therefore support calls made by many non-governmental organisations, including WWF, for an approach to flood management that places a much greater focus on the use of natural processes. That can have great benefits, as it can increase the storage capacity of the land and act to slow water down, both of which are important in militating against flooding.

Elliot Morley: I have heard all the arguments. Farmers in my constituency make similar points. It is a question of balance, is it not? It must be said, in all fairness, that there have been changes in farming practice over the decades. In some instances, there has been a move away from sustainable traditional farming, particularly in wash lands and water meadows where there used to be summer grazing, towards extensive drainage pumping and a shift to monoculture. All that, incidentally, has taken place at public expense: all those pumps and drains were financed by the taxpayer. But a balance must be struck between sustainable agriculture-the importance of food production-and sustainable flood management, and I believe that the Bill paves the way for that. There are issues that it needs to address further, but it is a welcome step forward.
	Surface water was a major problem in my constituency in 2007, when there was extensive flooding in the town of Kirton in Lindsey. Let me record my appreciation for the funds that the Government provided for recovery following those floods. The additional funds for North Lincolnshire council enabled it to increase the number of drains, to replace inadequate drains, and to install a proper outlet in the surface water drains at the bottom of the hill, where the town is. That could not have been done without those extra funds from the Government.
	There are people on North Lincolnshire council with experience of flood management, but there are not many of them, and they are nearing retirement age. I agree with the suggestion by the Local Government Association that if local authorities are to play a more proactive role in flood management and flood planning-which I strongly support-there will have to be some support for skills, so that there are people to deal with surveys, flood risk assessments and engineering advice. My council had to bring in consultants to handle some of the technical problems, and it would be much better if that could be done in-house.
	I do not have a strong opinion on two-tier councils. My local authority is unitary and therefore has responsibility for these matters, and I think that that works very well. However, where there are two-tier councils I believe that district councils need to be involved as much as possible, not least because they are the planning authorities and planning cannot be divorced from flood management. That will require some thought.
	I am pleased to note the commitment given to sustainable urban drainage, of which I have always been a great supporter. I have seen one or two schemes around the country, and I think that they work very well. I believe that it is possible to gain environmental enhancements from SUDS. They can make an area look nice: green space can be used, soak-away areas can serve as paths or cycleways, there can be ponds, and there can be all sorts of different designs. There is, however, the issue of who pays for the maintenance, and it is one of the issues that have blocked the development of SUDS.
	It was a great step forward to create a committee to approve and supervise SUDS, but I am still not clear about who will pay for their upkeep. There are various options, but the issue will need to be clarified in Committee. One suggestion is that those with SUDS will not have to pay drainage charges to the water companies, but someone will have to pay for the upkeep in one way or another, whether it is the water companies-which have the advantage of maintenance skills-local authorities or developers.
	Along with others, I warmly welcome the clause that deals with the question of lower drainage charges for community groups, which has been raised by many Members and in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Water, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) and I are both members. I am glad that the Government have responded and are dealing with the problem. The Scunthorpe bridge club, which has tremendous support from the community-it is an ideal community group-recently moved into a former factory with a large car-parking area, and received a very large bill for drainage. Community groups are not really in a position to deal with bills like that.
	There are many omissions from the Bill, but I understand the reasons for that. I am glad that it has been presented, and that it is being given its Second Reading now so that it can be included in the business programme. I know how difficult it is to secure slots in the programme, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has done very well to ensure that it has reached this stage so early.
	I know that it is impossible to produce a comprehensive Bill dealing with a number of controversial issues in a short period, but there is one issue that I hope my right hon. Friend will consider: the issue of water bill arrears. It would be possible to introduce fairly simple changes to give water companies the right to know where people had moved to so that they could pursue arrears. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said that the Conservatives would support such a move, so it is clearly not controversial. I do not think it right for the arrears of people who can pay, but will not pay, to be added to the bills of the majority of water customers. A simple measure allowing water companies to track down customers who could pay but have not done so would be very welcome.
	Overall, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the Bill. I also welcome the report of the Select Committee, which went into the issues in great detail. I believe that these measures will help flood and coastal management. Although it is impossible ever to stop floods, it is certainly possible to minimise the risk.
	It is also impossible ever to stop coastal erosion, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) observed, people should not be misled by suggestions that it is possible to defend the whole of our coastline. Not only, in some cases, is it not cost-effective-we should not duck that issue-but in some cases there is no technical solution, and we must recognise that. Instead, we should be working with coastal local authorities and communities and looking at how we can minimise the impact on them. Sadly, however, that does not necessarily mean there is a solution for every part of our coastline; we should be honest about that.
	I greatly welcome the Bill, and I hope that it receives support from both sides of the House and enjoys a speedy passage through its Committee stage.

Martin Horwood: My test of the Flood and Water Management Bill is whether it will help Warden Hill. It is important and right to sympathise with people in Cumbria, to remember the loss of life and to celebrate the extraordinary response of the emergency services, volunteers, friends and neighbours to both the recent floods and previous ones. We all share those sentiments. However, the real test for this Bill is whether all the strategic overviews and lead responsibilities-the national risk management strategies and flood risk management functions-will actually deliver for people in Gloucestershire, Cumbria, Yorkshire and all the other parts of the country that have now experienced severe flooding not only from river flooding but from surface and ground water flooding, or that now face increased flood risk.
	We must make no mistake about this: the risk will increase. The Secretary of State has been in Copenhagen, pressing, I hope, for a tough deal to tackle global climate change. We should all thank him and other delegates from all over the world, and wish them well in their efforts and hope that they succeed, but tough deal or not, we have to face up to the reality of the effects of climate change that are already locked into the system. Scientific evidence to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear. It says:
	"Basic theory, climate model simulations and empirical evidence all confirm that warmer climates, owing to increased water vapour, lead to more intense precipitation events even when the total annual precipitation is reduced slightly, and with prospects for even stronger events when the overall precipitation amounts increase. The warmer climate therefore increases risks of both drought-where it is not raining-and floods-where it is".
	With the world struggling to limit rises in global temperature to 2°, it is clear why our Environment Agency has concluded that flood events currently expected once every 100 years could be happening once every three years by the end of this century. Let us imagine the events at Cockermouth, Tewkesbury, Hull, or even Cheltenham with its 600 flooded properties, repeated in town after town, year after year, and the strain that that will put on residents, the emergency services, local authorities and those responsible for critical infrastructure, as well as on insurance companies, water companies and the Government's flood alleviation programme, and therefore on the bills, premiums and taxes we will all have to pay. The 2007 floods alone cost the United Kingdom £3 billion; the cost to the economy of much more frequent flooding would be unimaginably high. It is absolutely critical, therefore, that in the time we have available now, before the situation reaches that level of perpetual crisis, we sort out all the problems that have been highlighted by the extreme flooding events of recent years-and not just flooding, of course but droughts, water shortages and coastal erosion from tides and storm surges.
	In tackling all these issues, it is essential that we work with nature, not against it, and I have to say that I share other hon. Members' concerns that the Conservative approach set out by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) sounded rather Canute-like in its defiance of natural forces.

Martin Horwood: Not on that point, I am afraid.
	The natural environment can be our ally, and our tutor, in providing more space for water, better flood risk management, more intelligent planning, more cost-effective strategies and more secure supplies, and in the process we should take the opportunity to enhance and defend native species and landscapes and biodiversity, and serve a wider environmental agenda.
	The residents of Warden Hill do not just want less water flooding into their streets and houses and more flood defences-although I should thank Cheltenham borough council for the funding it has managed to obtain for those that are currently planned. Residents want affordable water and insurance bills, a pleasant and sustainable natural environment around them, and future development that does not make their problems worse and necessitate even more expensive flood defences in future, diverting increasingly precious taxpayers' money from other services. Ideally, they also want a bit more warning next time.
	How much does this Bill contribute to all these objectives? We might think that after two and a half years of multiple reviews and consultations, extensive pre-legislative scrutiny and expert advice, we would have a truly outstanding and comprehensive piece of legislation-a veritable torrent of good ideas. Sadly, however, what we have in this water Bill is more of a trickle than a torrent. It is flowing in the right direction, but there is not much of a current. It is not big enough or strong enough to tackle many of the problems highlighted by the events of the last few years. It is better than nothing after such a long wait, but it is still a disappointment.
	Let us not be churlish, however. The Bill does helpfully define a flood as an event in which
	"land not normally covered by water becomes covered by water."
	Well, phew, at least we have covered that one. As many hon. Members have mentioned, clause 42 rightly addresses the issue of the rain tax and community groups such as scout groups. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs claimed that as a Conservative win, but I have to say that I do not remember him spotting this any more than the rest of us did when area-based charging was first introduced. This loophole was, in effect, highlighted as a result of a very bad bit of implementation by one water company. Members on both sides of the House supported this revision, and the clause is most welcome.
	The Bill takes forward some ideas from the Pitt review. We have a national oversight-a "buck stops here" responsibility-for the Environment Agency. We have a local lead responsibility for local authorities. Both of these measures are welcome, but although I noted the Secretary of State's brave claim that all new net burdens on local authorities would be fully funded, back in the real world it is far from clear how exactly these provisions are to be resourced, and whether the Bill will truly sort out the bewildering tangle of responsibilities that surfaced in the floods. These are issues that the Bill Committee must explore in a lot more detail.
	The issue of the maintenance of watercourses, drains and sewers has been raised time and again by local residents in many Members' constituencies, and certainly in mine. In particular, we should explore whether the linked issue of unadopted sewers is being adequately addressed. Cheltenham resident Bridget Sansom e-mailed me saying that
	"during the summer of 2007 floods, there was a backflow of sewage via the washing machine into the kitchen. This is the result of unadopted sewerage and still has not been solved two years on."
	She asked for my "comments, support and help." Let me start by asking about the Government's current plan for the water companies to adopt private sewers. Has that been properly accounted for? The Government recently claimed that water bills in many areas would be going down by a few pounds per household, yet the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs impact assessment on sewer transfer predicted a cost to water companies for that transfer ranging from £4 to £12 per household, and this is not included in the price review 2009 figures. This will more than offset the decrease in water bills that was claimed. So which is the truth? Are water bills going up and not down, or are the Government planning to dodge this crucial issue?
	The Bill talks a lot about risk management, but the definitions appear quite limited on first reading. There is, for instance, no explicit reference to risks associated with critical infrastructure. This was a particular issue in Gloucestershire, where the loss of the Mythe water treatment works to the floods meant the loss of fresh water to thousands of people for up to two weeks, and where the absolutely catastrophic loss of electricity supply-not just, as my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) pointed out, to Gloucestershire, but to more than 500,000 people, and as far away as Wales-was only narrowly averted by the quick, co-ordinated action of gold command, Gloucestershire constabulary and the Army and other emergency services. I must declare a personal interest here, as my wife was a member of gold command.
	A key Pitt recommendation was that we address this issue of critical infrastructure and, with some prescience, it referred not only to power and fresh water but to transport infrastructure. I am sure that the people of Cumbria, who have lost road and other communications, would agree with that. Pitt's recommendation 53 stated:
	"A specific duty should be placed on economic regulators to build resilience in the critical infrastructure."
	The Secretary of State has issued guidance on this issue to the regulators and yet more consultation is promised, but guidance and consultation have been issued before-as long ago as 2004-and we were still terribly exposed in 2007 and again in 2009. Work is being done to address the specific risks in Gloucestershire, and that is very much appreciated-such work may well be done in Cumbria too-but we need to consider whether or not the legal duty that Pitt recommended is necessary to protect the rest of the country and whether or not the Government are, once again, using consultation as a substitute for action.
	We must also consider the personal cost. I am talking not only about the trauma and disruption of having flood water destroy and pollute one's home or business, and the human impact of homelessness and lost possessions; after the flood water has gone and the property has been replaced or repaired, the insurance will need renewing. One of my constituents found that not only had his insurance premiums skyrocketed but the excess for flood damage had risen from £50 to £5,000. I have heard figures as high as £20,000 cited by others and in some cases flooding has been excluded as a risk altogether. That is not really insurance in the sense of a collective scheme to pool risk and protect all of us from extreme events. What added insult to injury in my constituent's case was that since the floods the Environment Agency had spent thousands erecting a flood wall to the rear of his property, protecting him and his neighbours from a repeat of the event that flooded their houses in 2007. The insurance issues were resolved in that case, but it raises a number of questions.
	First, should insurance take account of work, either at household or local level, that has reduced the risk of flooding? Secondly, should insurance companies be allowed to claim that they are insuring almost everyone and then impose such punitive premiums, excess charges or exclusions that they render someone's policy virtually useless? It makes good business sense to sell well-targeted insurance to those at almost no risk and very little insurance to those at any risk, but that has a high social cost. In a previous decade, some insurance companies used to exclude people who had taken an HIV test. As happened then, do we not now need a collective solution that takes account of a social need? Do we not, thus, need a solution that excludes from insurance only those at a genuinely very high risk of repeated flooding where no steps have been taken to defend them or their property, and that supports the good principle of shared risk for everyone else?

Martin Horwood: The hon. Gentleman is entirely right, and the situation he describes reinforces the need for some kind of intervention in the market. All these steps make business sense for individual insurance companies-in a sense, they are only doing what businesses do naturally-but we clearly need to find a better collective solution.
	The last question that all this raises is what is the long-term plan for those who really cannot be defended against flood, coastal erosion or natural hazard. In fairness, I could not possibly suggest that the insurance industry and its other customers continue to pick up the tab for properties that we now realise are not going to be viable in the long term, but are their occupants simply to be left uninsured with a property of collapsing value? My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) has been a tireless champion of the rights of people placed unexpectedly in this kind of situation from faster than expected coastal erosion in his constituency. As the Secretary of State has mentioned, an innovative approach to householders at long-term risk will now be tried there and elsewhere in which householders sell and lease back their homes. My hon. Friend seems to have secured social justice for his constituents, with the support now of the Government and of the Environment Agency, but what about other people's constituents who are facing unexpected long-term risk and who are not on the coast? On that issue, as on the others I have mentioned relating to insurance and household risk, the Bill is silent.
	Another way in which individual risk could be reduced and the insurance bill minimised is through a better, faster and much more specific system of flood alerts. The Government have instituted the new flood forecasting centre, which is an impressive office in Clerkenwell, bringing together expert skills from the Environment Agency and the Met Office. That is a very impressive start, but the Met Office's modelling and tracking of rainfall is advancing in leaps and bounds and can now predict very heavy rainfall on a very localised basis, down to a resolution of just 1 km. The current flood alert system is based on much broader, generalised flood alerts, delivered-as I remember from 2007-for days in advance. They are obviously a good thing, but a much more specific and targeted warning, even a few hours or less before a localised high rainfall event, would give people vital minutes in which to save their personal possessions. I would like to hear the Secretary of State's views on flood alerts and on whether or not the Bill should include a mandate for a much more ambitious scheme that could save individual property and save us collectively millions of pounds.
	May I also ask whether other Government policies are not actually making the situation worse? Let us return to my Warden Hill test. I have in my possession a flood catchment study map that clearly shows the contribution that nearby green fields in Leckhampton make to the retention of water in the landscape. Expensive flood defences are being built in Warden Hill, but how crazy would it be to build on those green fields and create an even greater flood risk all over again? Yet after a local visit lasting only a few minutes, Government inspectors included precisely that area in the Communities Secretary's proposed changes to the draft south-west regional spatial strategy and earmarked it for thousands of houses. My neighbour, the hon. Member for Tewkesbury, will know that in Tewkesbury, which is not far away from the area I am discussing, a whole new housing estate at Wheatpieces has already been given the green light in a very high flood risk area.
	In a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin) confirmed that 135,000 dwellings have been built in flood risk areas in the past 10 years. According to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, across the country 27,000 hectares of green belt land is at risk of development. By definition, such land is right next to urban areas, and years ago the Foresight study rightly identified creeping urbanisation as a key factor in increasing flood risk. In one of his less robust moments, Sir Michael Pitt suggested that the current planning guidance, planning policy statement 25, should be maintained but kept under review.
	We need to go much further than that, because PPS25 is hopelessly site-specific. The Environment Agency is often placated by a balancing pond here or there, and even when it does maintain opposition to a development, its advice is often ignored or overturned. We need to introduce planning policies that are created by local authorities working together, with the involvement of local people, including farmers-not by regional quangos. We need policies that address water issues on a landscape scale and with real force in planning law. The sustainable drainage provisions in the Bill are welcome, but they are wholly inadequate to deal with the scale of problem we face. As the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs pointed out, the piecemeal approach in the Bill is simply not ambitious enough and the connected issue of spatial planning must be addressed.

Martin Horwood: I have put on the record many times my views and those of my party on Ofwat's remit. We have published party policy, which I shall happily send to the right hon. Gentleman.
	Ofwat also needs to be told that the environment can no longer be considered a subsidiary responsibility of its economic duties. The economy exists within the environment, not the other way round. We have to learn to live within environmental constraints and an obvious first step would be to break the link between resource use and company profit. It would not be rocket science to design an environmentally-friendly tariff whereby increased water use compared to historic household levels earned the household a higher bill, but the increased revenue went not into the water company's coffers but straight into water efficiency or environmentally friendly water management measures.
	All in all, the Bill is a bit of a drip when we needed a good shower. It does take welcome steps in allocating clearer responsibilities and addressing issues of sustainable drainage and flood risk management, but it leaves untouched major issues of insurance, planning and environmental issues that need to be addressed. The emergency services, the Army, the NHS, volunteers, friends and neighbours have all played their parts brilliantly, and I join the Secretary of State and others in thanking them all. However, the time has finally come for us to do our part, too. The residents of Warden hill and of the rest of Cheltenham, as well as the residents of Gloucestershire, Cumbria, Yorkshire and the rest of the country deserve nothing less.

Mike Hall: I welcome the Flood and Water Management Bill. I am pleased that it will receive a Second Reading this evening and I hope it is not long before it is on the statute book.
	At this moment in time, the eyes of the world are rightly focused on Copenhagen and the world climate change summit. I hope that we can decide on substantial and sustainable reductions on carbon emissions this weekend. I know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his excellent ministerial team will do all in their power to get the right deal at Copenhagen.
	I am aware that some Members of this House and others outside deny climate change and that others are sceptical about the science. I am not one of them. I accept that climate change is taking place. Instead of having the four seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn, it seems to me that we are moving towards two prolonged seasons: spring and autumn. That assessment is, I accept, much too general, but we do face climate change.
	I agree with the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) that we might not be able to blame climate change for the floods that took place in 2007 and for the floods that took place in 2009 in Cumbria. However, unless we address climate change, it is likely that flooding will become a major problem in the future. That is important to me because the most defining geographical features of my Weaver Vale constituency are the River Mersey, the River Weaver and the River Dane, the Bridgewater canal and the Weaver navigation canal.
	Water is a significant feature of my constituency, and the old historic town of Northwich has a long history of flooding. In November 2000, we had floods in the town centre where the River Dane and the River Weaver come together. The measures in the Bill will make it more unlikely that we will be visited by floods in the future. I therefore welcome the provisions in the Bill to strengthen flood defences.
	It is right that the Government have addressed the proposals brought forward by Sir Michael Pitt following his review of the 2007 floods. Of significant interest is the fact that the Environment Agency is to be given responsibility for developing a national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy. Dovetailing with that, quite rightly, will be the Bill's requirement that unitary and county councils should take the lead in managing the risk of all locally caused floods, and again I welcome that requirement.
	In my constituency, that means that Cheshire West and Chester unitary council and Halton borough council will perform that important task. That is a step in the right direction, and I am confident that Halton borough council will play a full role in developing plans to manage risk for all locally caused floods. I have a word of caution for hon. Members, however, about the new Cheshire West and Chester unitary authority. Sadly, that council has all too quickly developed a reputation for not doing much and not listening to what local people want. Its inaction over the redevelopment of Northwich town centre following the completion of the £35 million Government-funded town stabilisation project is a case in point. I hope, therefore, that the Bill will include measures to enable the Environment Agency and DEFRA to scrutinise the council's progress on its important role of managing floods.
	I shall now turn to what has become known as the rain tax aspect of the Bill. I was glad that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said in July that the Conservative party was calling for action on the issue, although I am sure that that was not a result of the ten-minute Bill that I introduced on 12 May. That Bill would have dealt with the problem by exempting places of worship, non-profit-making sports clubs and scout and guide groups from surface water and highway drainage charges, although I should apologise for an error in my drafting because community and village halls clearly should have been included in the Bill's scope as they, too, need to be exempt from the charges.
	The introduction by United Utilities of surface area and highway drainage charges signalled a large increase in the water bills faced by scout and guide groups, places of worship, sports clubs, village halls and the like. The changes were introduced following the review by Ofwat of how water companies should charge for surface water drainage. It concluded that the fairest approach was to charge non-household customers based on the size of the site that they occupied, and that charge is called site area charging.
	Astonishingly, Ofwat did not examine the impact of the change on voluntary community groups, although it warned water companies that surface area charging might have a negative impact on sensitive properties such as schools, hospitals and places of worship. In general, it warned that water companies would need to take account of the scale and speed of any changes to determine whether they were reasonable and acceptable to customers. United Utilities took Ofwat's advice by bringing in surface area charging, but it did not take any account of the scale and speed of the changes in charging, and whether they would be reasonable and acceptable to customers.
	Following reports in the media of the impact of the changes, it was not long before I was visited by community groups such as churches, sports clubs and scout groups. They had also received representations from their parent organisations warning that the way in which United Utilities had approached the situation would mean that would be faced with seriously high drainage charges. Before the charges were introduced, such organisations had been granted significant discounts on their water bills because of their charitable status. Their bills had been based on the rateable value of the properties that they occupied, which were either zero-rated or heavily discounted.
	I have previously given the House two examples of what has happened, the first of which was that the 1st Halton scout group in my constituency saw its water bill increase by 424 per cent. A church organisation has also had a problem. St. Marks church and Bethesda church, which are part of the Hallwood ecumenical parish in Runcorn, are jointly billed for water. In 2007-08, they did not pay any water rates at all, but in 2008-09 they received a charge of £181.76. That charge was set to rise to approximately £2,000 in 2010-11. The Hallwood ecumenical parish could not afford such a massive increase, so I am pleased that there has been some movement in how the matter will be dealt with. Every pound that such organisations spend on surface water drainage is one pound less for them to spend on the services they provide for their parishioners and members, and the communities they serve. Hon. Members representing all parties have rightly criticised these charges on the Floor of the House. Even Ofwat has joined in the criticism-surprisingly, because it was the author of the change itself.
	In early 2009, Ofwat announce that United Utilities had agreed to a one-year moratorium during which surface area charges would be frozen at 2008-09 levels for faith buildings, community sports clubs, scout groups and guide associations. At face value, that measure was greatly to be welcomed, but I was concerned at the time that a one-year moratorium would only delay the implementation of surface area charging and would not result in a change to the charging policy that would be both acceptable and fair to these organisations that serve their communities well.
	I was concerned that Ofwat made it clear to United Utilities that it should use the one-year moratorium to work with customers, to communicate the need for the new charges, and to offer advice on how customers could implement environmental improvements that will help them to reduce their costs significantly. It also said that United Utilities would use the moratorium to create a new time frame for the implementation of surface area charging by spreading the remaining charge over a longer period to give customers time to put in place measures to offset future costs and benefit the environment.
	On that basis, at the beginning of 2010-11, places of worship, community sports clubs, scout groups, Guide associations and village halls would have been faced with substantially larger bills for drainage. Simply altering the implementation date for surface area charging was not the solution that those organisations were looking for. They wanted a scheme that would put them back in their position prior to the change.
	To complicate things-and to make matters worse-Ofwat made it clear to water companies that it would not approve any tariffs for surface area charging that involved cross-subsidies, that were based on rateable values or that involved exemptions. It also instructed all water companies that their tariffs for surface area charging would have to be approved by November 2009. Conversely, it did not say what types of charges, other than surface area charging, would be acceptable.
	Throughout the whole exercise, the Government kept a close eye on proceedings. I pay particular tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), who has dealt with the problem fantastically. I was also delighted when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced in his party conference speech in late September that he would bring forward measures to address the problem. I therefore welcome the Government's decision to bring forward the Bill, which will give water companies the power to introduce concessionary schemes for surface area drainage charges for amateur sports clubs, scout groups, places of worship and other community groups.

Michael Jack: This may well be the last speech that I make on a piece of environmental legislation before I retire at the next election. I have the honour of chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and we have done a number of reports on flooding and the implementation of the Pitt review. We have also been involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill, so I felt it only right to make a final and modest contribution to this debate.
	I am grateful for the kind words from the Secretary of State acknowledging the work that the Committee has done, and I should like to begin by putting on record my appreciation of the work done by the Committee's staff. The Clerks, the inquiry managers and our special advisers are the unsung heroes of parliamentary scrutiny work. They do not get the headlines or the opportunity to speak in debates like this, but pre-legislative scrutiny of the quality that we have been able to achieve would not take place without their efforts.
	Perhaps controversially in the light of observations made in the debate so far, our report recommended a delay in introducing this legislation. That was not because we did not want the Environment Agency and others to take on an important co-ordinating role in developing a flood-risk strategy, especially given the failure of the surface water arrangements that was exposed in 2007. We want that strategy to come into force, but our report was a way of putting down a marker. As so many contributions have already suggested, the issue of water cannot easily be disaggregated into a lot of little bits and pieces. As the Secretary of State's own policy document, "Making Space for Water", acknowledges, all the functions have to be integrated.
	For example, we must take account of Anna Walker's review of how water should be paid for, and how we can optimise its use and minimise its waste. We must also heed the other work that has been done on competition in the water industry, and the question of who is responsible for what in any aspect of the management of water. That inevitably means that this is a big and complex matter-as witnessed by the fact that the original Bill had 269 clauses. In contrast, the Bill before us today has been reduced to 49 clauses and four annexes. That is a remarkable piece of editorial activity, and I congratulate the drafters on their achievement.

Michael Jack: My hon. Friend brings me on to two points that I wanted to touch on. The first is that I think that all of us must be honest with ourselves and with the public about what can be afforded, and what cannot. The Secretary of State will no doubt remind the House when he winds up that the Government have increased spending on flood-prevention measures. I think that the total will be £1 billion by 2011, but the Association of British Insurers has suggested that expenditure should be as high has £1.5 billion. When the implementation of the Pitt proposals was costed, Pitt himself indicated that there was an inadequacy of funding.
	We must be realistic. Under the current circumstances, we cannot, for example, protect everything by means of hard-engineering solutions. One of the outcomes of the work to be done on risk assessment and the development of a strategy should be to fulfil the objective set out in clause 3, where it speaks of
	"preparing, gathering and disseminating maps, plans, surveys and other information"
	for communities. Communities must be informed about the risks they face. More importantly, they must be informed about what risks can be dealt with-and, more importantly still, what risks cannot be dealt with.
	The subject of resilience has already made an appearance in this debate, and quite rightly so. I do not think that we spend enough time on that. One of the most impressive groups of witnesses to come before the Committee came from the National Floods Forum. The forum operates something like a British standard that delineates what equipment works and what does not, but it also has a great deal of experience in giving people in communities guidance on how to make things resilient.
	The tragedies of Cumbria and Boscastle have made me wonder whether people in those communities were aware that there were risks that could not be engineered away. If they were so aware, could they, with adequate notice and advice, have prepared themselves better to protect their existing properties?
	All that is notwithstanding the observations that have been made about building new properties above flood-risk areas. I very much agree with the observations that many hon. Members have made already about planning and building in flood plain areas. We need to be much harder with ourselves and work to stop increasing flood risk.
	My hon. Friend the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire made a very good point about our trip to Lyons. The city lies at the confluence of two of France's major rivers, and it is very interesting to see how the authorities there have integrated their flood defences both regionally and locally. They have built massive sustainable urban drainage schemes, and the integration of those SUDS with the protection of the built environment is very impressive. It provides some very important lessons for how we might do the same here.
	However, when we look at how the Bill is drafted, there is a subtlety about clause 3 and the way that it integrates with clause 7. We as legislators must read the definition of "risk" with care, and I hope that the Committee that succeeds the one that I chair will examine carefully how all those tasked with developing the new strategies deal with that definition. We must make rigorously certain that "risk" incorporates all the things that have been mentioned in the debate so far, and that a response to those risk elements is part of the Environment Agency's strategy. If we do that then, with the right degree of scrutiny and pressure from parliamentarians, we can use the subtlety of the drafting to ensure that we can at least have the right shopping list, so to speak, of the things that must be responded to. Thereafter, we can examine critically way whether we have the resources and the wherewithal to deal with any problems that might arise.
	One thing that worries me is whether we have, in sum total, the right degree of expertise, especially with regard to engineers skilled in the management of water. The Environment Agency has taken steps to address that issue, but it strikes me that those particular talents will be in very great demand, especially among the local authorities at county level that will be in charge of implementing some of these strategic matters.
	Water does not recognise political boundaries. I hope the Committee will examine carefully whether, in developing strategies on political boundaries, we have the mechanisms for catchment areas to knit things together. One of the problems arising from the truncated Bill is that the flood risk management plans that are part of the EU floods directive implementation process are dealt with by statutory instrument outwith the scope of the Bill. I understand why, for legislative reasons, the Government are doing that, but the danger is that the legislation implementing the European directive remains outside the integrating function of the Bill. I seek reassurance from the Secretary of State in his winding-up speech that the gluing together of the parts will take place.
	One of the things missing from the Bill is the requirement for the Environment Agency to prepare river maps showing who is responsible for what. That seems to me to be part of the requirements of the EU floods directive. We can immediately see the complexity and the problem of integrating all the parts so that the strategy developed by the Environment Agency will work in reality. I hope the Secretary of State will address the issue in his winding-up speech or when the Bill goes into Committee.
	We have talked a great deal this evening about SUDS. Our Committee looked, for example, at highway drainage. When the 2007 events occurred, our highways became the drainage channels to rivers in such a way that the rivers could not accommodate the water running off so quickly. "Slow water" is a phrase that has been used in the debate this evening. Anything that slows things down is a good idea. The integration of sustainable urban drainage solutions for highways is jolly good but, as the Government said:
	"We recognise that there is currently no incentive for highway authorities to install sustainable drainage systems because the cost of highway drainage is met by water customers."
	That is the kind of risk factor which, if it is teased out at the planning stage of the development of the risk strategy, we might be able to mitigate, but it requires a burden shift in terms of funding. We see the same questions recurring about resources and who has the money to deal with these complicated issues. In Committee some of the real- world challenges posed by flooding should be tested out.
	In the Bill, the implications of climate change are a feature to be examined in the context of the development of the strategy. One of the things that increasingly worries me, and which the sad events in Cumbria underscore, is that a one in 1,000-year event can occur. I was asked about this in the context of our existing flood defence systems. In a city such as London, the highway drainage system is scoped to deal with a one in 30-year event. What would happen in London if a one in 1,000-year event occurred? We would have catastrophic flooding, but can we afford to scope up our drainage system by a factor of 30 to cope with that? The answer is probably no. That is why we must be honest when we look at what we can and cannot do, and prepare accordingly.
	The Bill is silent on the critical infrastructure but-coming back to the question of risks and picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood)-that can be incorporated in the risks and therefore encompassed by the strategy of the Environment Agency. If the Bill deals with the risks of reservoirs, the question of the integrity of bridges needs to be re-examined.
	Cumbria taught us a rude and painful lesson. Structures which we thought were impervious to the effects of flooding certainly were not. A new dimension of community disruption occurred which none of the previous flooding events in this country had illustrated. Although the Bill is silent on that, the powers and the responsibilities, particularly of county highway authorities, should be re-examined to make sure that there is a duty upon them to re-examine bridge structures regularly to determine whether they are capable of withstanding the type of event that occurred in Cumbria.
	One of the aspects that we should reflect on, which emerged from the evidence that we received, is that in the areas that we represent, all of us have a much more articulate constituency of members of the public who are now infinitely better informed about every aspect of flooding. They know about water courses, they have local knowledge, and they are vociferous in arguing their corner. They are a very important part of the process that the Bill deals with. If we as politicians do not recognise the human dimension-the public dimension-all our discussions about flooding, water charging and so on will be the poorer. We must acknowledge the role of the informed member of the public and make certain that they are properly involved in the consultation processes for which the Bill provides as part of the strategy that the Environment Agency is to introduce.
	I conclude by saying that I, too, am delighted that the Bill deals with the surface area water charging regime. However, I have one concern. The Bill rightly identifies one group of people who can benefit from positive discrimination. I support that, but on the issue of the affordability of water, individual citizens may look slightly jealously at that part of the Bill and say, "What about us?" In supporting the intent of the Bill, I hope that whoever forms the next Government will return to the question early in the next Parliament and complete the task that the Bill begins.

David Heath: I come from, and represent, a very wet place. Flooding is something that we in the levels of Somerset have to deal with regularly, and certainly on an annual basis. Indeed, many of the village names in the area-Isle Abbots, Isle Brewers and Muchelney, which means "big island"-reflect the history of the place and the fact that those were island communities surrounded by wetland. We know what flooding is about. I am increasingly worried about the fact that these one-in-25-years, one-in-50-years and one-in-100-years events are now happening regularly. That leads me to suppose that the assessments based on historical data need to be revisited.
	I welcome the Bill not least because, as the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) said, the definition of flood risk-and therefore that which informs strategy-will, I hope, allow us to provide a comprehensive response to flooding difficulties. I suggest that those difficulties fall into three principal areas-prevention, mitigation and resilience, and response-and I want to deal rapidly with all three.
	Many people will consider prevention to be a matter of flood defences, which can go so far but are not the answer to all our flooding problems, whether in terms of engineering or costs. They might play a part in the response in some areas, but we cannot approach the problem simply by building higher and higher walls and bigger and bigger flood defences.
	The maintenance of ditches-or rhynes, as we call them in Somerset-to allow service water to flow away and to increase the capacity of watercourses is also important, but again those who consider the maintenance of waterways and drainage to be the answer are deluding themselves. The requirement goes far beyond the capacity even if the maintenance is perfect, which it certainly is not. I have my criticisms of highways authorities not paying attention to, for instance, road drains and the effect of constant service dressing, which often reduces ditch and drainage system capacity, but nevertheless I think we need to look at the matter anew.
	We certainly need to consider the control of flow. We desperately need the co-ordination of agencies such as the Environment Agency and local authorities, but we also need to incorporate the highways authorities, developers and the Highways Agency, which is responsible for major trunk roads, such as the A303, which is a major flood concern in my constituency. In some places, its construction allows too much water to pass underneath, and in other cases, it holds it up and produces some of the problems, as was the case in the villages around Wincanton and Anchor Hill at Holton.
	Bridges have the same capacity issues, and we have talked already about the vulnerability of bridges. That should not come as a surprise. I remember that, when I was a lad, the bridge at Pensford, which is probably in the Minister's constituency, washed away. It was a major issue at the time. Bridges are a vulnerability; but often they are pinch-points for water too, because the arches under them do not provide sufficient capacity. We need therefore to look at the management of water flow and bridge capacity. I would also like a much greater emphasis placed on the whole river catchment area approach, which we started experimenting with on the River Parret, in Somerset, way back in the early 1990s when I was a county councillor. That is the only way of managing water flow effectively through a whole river catchment area.
	Planning in connection with mitigation and resilience has been mentioned already. I made the point that we do not plan properly, but I was not just talking about building houses in the wrong places. We have a wonderful supermarket on the flood plain in Frome that was put there by a Government inspector against the advice of local people and authorities. It has impervious surfaces, of course, and a flood alleviation scheme attached to it. We hope that it will be successful, but nevertheless it is a risk.
	I simply do not understand, however, why we do not build houses more resilient to flooding. It does not take a genius to realise that if the garage or wet rooms, such as the utility room or kitchen, are put downstairs and rooms that might be damaged by water are put upstairs, the house will be more resilient to flooding. Foundations, too could be lifted by just 2 or 3 feet. I know of a house in Queen Camel that is subjected to regular flooding, but which does not flood, despite the fact that the neighbouring houses do, because its foundations are 3 feet higher than those of the surrounding houses. It is a very simple recipe.
	We need to consider community defences more and to encourage communities to take their own action where they can. The community of Stoney Stratton, in my constituency, knows what the problem is, where the water flow is and how to deal with it; what it does not have is the advice to help it to do it and the necessary resources which, as a community, it is prepared to provide via the parish council. I hope that we can encourage more local activity of that kind to provide that resilience.
	We also need much more local and voluntary effort, which will require advice and co-ordination. There are some wonderful initiatives in my constituency-for instance, in West Camel, which is regularly flooded, but where people are now fitting water gates at the doors of their properties. They are fitting pumps that are responsive to flooding and provide that initial help at the point at which goods are salvageable. They are also using waterproof paint for surfaces up to the flood level in houses. That is the sort of initiative that ought to be taken in flood-vulnerable areas. There is good practice out there and good advice at the household and community levels. When people take such measures, that ought to be reflected in the insurance premium, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) said.
	I want to deal now with the response. The emergency services must have the training to enable them to cope as best they can. We should remember that in rural areas it is often retained fire officers we are expecting to do such work. Warnings are important. More localised forecasting would be extremely helpful, as would having audible warning systems, not just the phone line, which has been successful and which I welcome. For a flood event in the middle of the night, it would be great if people knew that there would be a siren or even that a police car or a fire engine driving through the village with its siren going meant that they had to be on the alert for difficulties. Local readiness, encouraging volunteering, identifying vulnerable people in a parish council area and developing cascade systems are also important, as is developing community resources, even if that just means having a single dinghy available, so that people know where it is, who has to be collected and what the response has to be. Those are all things that need to be encouraged in the strategies.
	Lastly, I want to deal with those resources that one might term community resources, including local authority buildings such as schools. I have already mentioned the Countess Gytha school in Queen Camel, which has repeatedly flooded and which I visited again yesterday morning. We need to have a new school. The school must be re-sited. We have the site; what we do not have in the local authority is the cash to make that happen. If we are taking flooding seriously, local authorities must have the resources to take sensible actions and find better sites for key buildings such as schools, hospitals and elderly people's homes, rather than simply continually decanting children out and refurbishing buildings.
	However, that needs co-ordination between the Secretary of State's Department and other Departments, so that those resources are made available. I will be seeking a meeting with the Minister for Schools and Learners in the near future about that school, but I wish I knew that I had the support of DEFRA in saying that this issue-ensuring that community facilities that are regularly at risk of flooding will be supported by the Government's funding mechanisms to be moved to more appropriate places-is an urgent matter.
	The Bill is a start in the right direction. I can see it has enormous potential in developing the strategies, but there is a huge array of issues that it needs to encompass if it is to do so successfully.

Linda Gilroy: I welcome the Bill as a constituency MP, for reasons that I shall touch on later. However, I am also chair of the all-party group on water, and we have produced our own report-it came out slightly before "Future Water". Other Members have referred to Pitt, Cave, the price review 2009 and the Walker report. I am pleased that this Bill has been brought forward before the Christmas recess, as that gives it a strong chance of reaching the statute book, and it must do so.
	This Second Reading debate is taking place in a week in which there are important discussions about the change in our climate, which we see, and different and volatile patterns in water management, flooding and drought. That the Bill is to be given a Second Reading now is also a just tribute to the recent events in Cumbria.
	The Bill covers flood issues, and other Members have referred to the fact that it will enable the Environment Agency to create national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategies. Under clause 9, lead local flood authorities will be able to create flood risk management strategies. For reasons to which I referred in the Queen's Speech debate, that will be very welcome in my constituency, as it will be in all the other constituencies already mentioned in the debate. The Bill gives the EA and local authorities powers to carry out flood risk management works more easily.
	In respect of drought, the Bill will enable water companies to control non-essential usage of water more easily. In particular, it contains provisions on the use of hosepipes for activities such as washing cars and gardening, which are particularly relevant in the summer months when water is scarce.
	The Bill also tackles surface drainage issues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) waxed lyrical about that, as other Members have done on other water matters. The Bill will enable water companies to offer relief to community groups on surface water drainage charges, which has been much campaigned for. I welcome that for my constituency, as much as other Members have done for theirs.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) waxed lyrical about private sewers and sewerage-if one can wax lyrical about that topic. The mandatory build standards outlined in the Bill are greatly to be welcomed, but I heard what my hon. Friend said, and I hope that Ministers will have heard his pleas.
	Other Members have mentioned a variety of other topics, and future contributors will no doubt mention still more. No doubt, a further Bill will be forthcoming in future years to deal with the need for the sort of consolidating legislation that others have advocated. That is not an excuse for failing to introduce this measure. It is narrower in scope, but it is significant, particularly at this point in the legislative cycle. If this Bill had not been introduced, my Front-Bench colleagues would have been harangued by people from all parts of the House for not doing so, especially in the context of events in Cumbria. It is good that we are getting on with these measures.
	I would like the Bill to cover one issue arising from the Walker report. Hon. Members who know well the campaign of 20 years' length that I and other Members have fought would probably expect me at this point to mention the south-west's unique affordability charges. I shall mention those in passing, although the Secretary of State will be pleased to hear that that is not the issue that I expect to see in the Bill. I simply acknowledge that Walker stated:
	"Having looked at the particular economic, social and geographical circumstances of the South West Water area, the review team concluded that:
	Current high bills in the South West Water area relate to the poor state of the sewerage assets at privatisation".
	This is to the tune of £650 million. The report continued:
	"Dealing with the historic issues would address the root cause of the issue directly and could be addressed through a specific one-off adjustment or through annual transfers funded by government or, with a different set of fairness challenges, other water customers"
	across the country. These are big issues that someone needs to examine. Anna Walker rightly said:
	"Ofwat would be best placed to consider the options for implementing a one-off or other adjustment, and advising ministers accordingly".
	I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) for having referred this speedily to the regulator, so that it can get on with examining the matter.
	However, the issue that I wish to discuss in the minutes available to me has been raised by a number of other Members-I am talking about water debt. Unpaid water bills last year resulted in water debt of more than £1.25 billion, which was an increase of more than 13 per cent. on the previous year. About 44 per cent. of household water debt is held by customers in rented accommodation and a high proportion is a result of what the industry terms as "leavers"-people who have gone. There is no requirement on tenants or landlords to provide information on the user of the water-the person responsible for the water charges.
	The final report of the Walker review recommends:
	"As a priority, the Water Industry Act 1991 should be amended to provide for a named customer and clarify who is responsible for paying the water bill; the 'liable person' should be the property owner unless they discharge their liability to the water company by providing tenancy information correctly and in a timely manner".
	That recommendation could help to deal with the significant problem of debt from household customers, which costs the rest of us, including many low-income customers in my constituency and across the United Kingdom, £12 on every bill.
	Debt in the energy sector is about one fifth of that in the water sector, despite the considerably higher bills. In comparison, the levels of debt in the electricity and gas sectors have remained broadly static, according to Ofgem. The number of energy customers repaying a debt at the end of 2008 was 1.3 million in respect of electricity and 0.8 million in respect of gas. In the water sector, more than 5 million customers are in debt, which suggests that as well as there being some people who struggle to pay those bills, particularly in my water area, many simply will not pay.
	There is something that can be done about it: we can give better powers to the companies to follow up those debts. A key problem is knowing who to bill, especially with short-term private rental properties. Landlords could be required to provide information on their tenants and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will listen to the number of views that have been expressed on both sides of the House. The Government as well as water users who are paying for this debt could benefit from the measure, simply because there will have to be an interim review to take account of the expected investment of taking on private sewers-I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood has returned to his seat. The cost will be considerable and has not been factored into PR09, and there is therefore a win-win situation for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State if he ensures that by the time we get around to such an interim review, the matter of debt is on its way to being resolved by what should be a fairly straightforward amendment to the Bill.

David Drew: I am delighted to make a short contribution, following my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan). The Bill is important. As a member of the Select Committee, I could make an argument for delay so that we got the totality of the Bill, but it is important that we prioritise the flooding aspects of the earlier Floods and Water Bill and deal with some aspects of water management.
	I approach the Bill from three standpoints. First, the Select Committee's pre-legislative scrutiny was a detailed exercise. I have tried to read the papers. We have done our homework and carried out our scrutiny role properly. Secondly, as my two constituency neighbours explained in graphic detail, Gloucestershire will be renowned for the 2007 floods. All of us who were involved in those dreadful days will always remember what that meant for some people and their representatives. As we know, some of the problems continue. I was dealing with floods only a few weeks ago. Thankfully, they were not major but they were still significant. The problem is not ever-present, but it has not gone away.
	As a result, my third point of influence is through the work of the people who formed action groups. I shall mention four, although there are more in my constituency-the Painswick Stream group, the Slad Brook group, the Bridgend group in Stonehouse, where I live, and the Shorn Brook group in Hardwicke. Each of those groups has lobbied me and kept me directly in touch will all developments. I have learned that the problem is ongoing. More than anything, we must be honest with people. I shall say more about that shortly.
	To me, there are four aspects that we should try to bring together. There are issues of leadership, particularly leadership from the centre, but also at a local level, funding, responsibility and deliverability. The two Pitt reports did an immense service by highlighting a series of recommendations. Pleasingly, the Government are turning the clock forward and bringing into statute the very things that Michael Pitt asked us to do, although most of the recommendations did not require legislation.
	At the centre of these efforts we have the double-headed hydra-the Environment Agency and the lead local authority. The decision-making mechanism can be criticised for its vertical structure, but as other hon. Members have said, unless there is clarity, there will always be confusion about who does what.
	I welcome the way in which the Government have set about trying to deal with the charging of voluntary and community groups. Some of us felt that that campaign might not be successful, but the Government have listened. Although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) said, we must make the campaign stronger, I am proud that I can go back to my Stroud groups and say that we have listened and we will do the right thing.
	I shall expand on three points that have been mentioned. First, I spend my life trying to persuade people that, far from being a problem, internal drainage boards are a valuable addition to the way in which we organise things at a local level. I think I understand what the Government want us to do through the legislation-to widen the IDBs realm of activity and to deepen their ability to co-ordinate their activities so that an IDB does not need to be too locally based. We miss a trick if we do not recognise the value of those people on the IDBs, given the way in which they can apply their skills, knowledge and, certainly, local understanding to any flooding situation. I do not mind levying the cost at all. I will go to any of my parish councils and tell them that we should levy a charge so that those IDBs can function, because the preparatory and preventive work that they are so able to carry out is very important.
	We have ducked riparian ownership, because it is an immense issue. We have not mentioned it, because, despite including it in the draft Bill, we cavilled even there at the possible repercussions of taking away responsibility from owners. We cannot duck the issue completely, however, and I shall concentrate on one simple aspect that has caused me enormous problems-when the riparian owner has not only failed to do the work, but has been obstructive and unhelpful, and other people have been flooded as a result. The riparian owner may have barricaded their land, built it up so that other people subsequently flood or, in one case of which I know, just refused to operate the sluice gates. When one sees a neighbour being flooded after they have desperately tried to get on to somebody else's property, which has barbed wire around it and barred gates, that is the most depressing thing. I therefore want the Bill to make it clear that we can prosecute such people and use enforcement, so that they at least get the message that that is not good neighbourliness. They should be held responsible for either their inactivity or their improper actions.
	We have also skated over the issue of critical infrastructure. People have mentioned the railways, and they are crucial to the issue, because they are a huge conduit for water. If we do not include the railway system and Network Rail, in particular, alongside the water boards, the Environment Agency and all the other public bodies, we will fail to realise how important they are. It has not always been easy to get such bodies to take responsibility. The situation has improved in my area, but some households flooded when the railway organisations failed to take responsibility for their cuttings, so I shall look very carefully at how we can co-ordinate activities and make the strategies more coherent.
	I shall leave my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to puzzle over my final point. It is about our raising expectations by putting in place a strategic plan, which in this case is the local service water management plan. I am very pleased that the Government have encouraged the 70-odd areas that are working through the issue to come up with such plans, but once they are in place it behoves us to find the money to deal with any subsequent problems.
	There is a need for honesty. If we are to put in place a plan and the money to fund the action, we should tell people. But, if that is not going to happen for any reason, we must, as I said in an intervention earlier, tell people and households that they will have to look at their own resilience and take their own measures because we cannot guarantee that, in every eventuality, they will be safe from flooding.
	That may be a sour note on which to end my contribution, but the worst thing of all was when we met people who thought they had been promised protection, and it was not possible to deliver that. We need complete honesty in how we go about these matters.

Anne McIntosh: I congratulate all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). I congratulate the Secretary of State on his staying power. The one missing element in the debate was the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies); we wish him very well in his negotiations on fisheries. I look forward to working with him constructively in the forthcoming Committee proceedings. I echo the warm reception that the Bill has received across the House, although all those who contributed took a cautious approach, and I think that there is room for improvement.
	The Secretary of State set the tone by relaying the events of the summer 2007 floods. I echo his tributes, and those of all hon. Members, to the emergency services-the police, fire and ambulance services, as well as the Environment Agency, local authorities and the armed forces, and in Cumbria, most recently, the mountain and fell rescue service. In the visits that I have made, I have been struck by the importance of the visibility of those who walk the streets, particularly those from the Environment Agency; they wear a uniform with a badge. It is also important that we recognise the resilience of local communities, most recently in Workington, Cockermouth and Keswick in Cumbria, as well as parts of the Copeland constituency.
	The Vale of York is distinctive in that it is about 65 per cent. flood plain; sadly, we are all too experienced with serious flooding. I should like to declare an interest in that I hope that the Secretary of State will soon allow our modest little scheme for Thirsk to go ahead through the Environment Agency. I would like to hold him to account for a comment that he made about the additional funds that were given in 2007 and, most recently, for the Cumbrian floods. Following the summer 2007 floods, our exercise proved that £50 million in out-of-pocket expenses was incurred by local authorities. I have questioned the Secretary of State and his hon. Friends about that. I hope that Cumbria and other communities that may well suffer in future will not be left with such high expenses.
	I should like to draw together some of the strands of the debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), who spoke very eloquently, referred to the definition of risk and the continuing role of adaptation. I would like to add to the list that he and others gave. We need a review not only of bridges and other critical infrastructure, which I understand has not yet been completed, but of all main roads and trunk roads. The M1 came very close to closing as a result of the summer 2007 floods. In a visit to the constituency of the hon. Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham), I was shocked to see the damage to one small road in Cockermouth, before a full audit was done.
	I think that everyone welcomes the strategic overview and role that the Environment Agency will be given, but it is very prescriptive. The fact that there is no appeals mechanism in relation to some of its prescriptive roles and powers is worthy of exploration in Committee. We must also consider how the draft strategy that the agency is to publish will link in with other elements. My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) talked about the need for a more integrated approach between the county and unitary authorities, and said that the district councils must not be excluded because they were the planning authorities. I am a particular fan of the internal drainage boards. I must declare that I am a vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities, an appointment of which I am particularly proud. Those boards have the necessary local expertise and skills, and, recently, the funds. We need to explore ways in which the internal drainage boards, the Environment Agency and the water companies can work more closely together.
	The Secretary of State may think that I am playing devil's advocate here, but while my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State set out clearly our role and that of local communities, I believe that there are certain matters on which the water companies have a further role to play. One is sustainable urban drainage systems, and I hope that the Secretary of State is minded to agree to our proposal to adopt the Scottish law definition of SUDS. I do not see any reason for having one definition north of the border and another south of the border, given that it is comprehensive. It is important that we identify where SUDS are, who currently owns them and who maintains them. That has not yet been achieved in the Bill, and we need an audit. From a cursory first reading of the Bill, I believe that the water companies have a prominent role to play in taking the lead responsibility for SUDS once we have established those facts. They have the skills and resources to do that in a way that local authorities may not.
	I entirely endorse what the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) said about sewers, which we cannot talk about often enough. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) for his work on sewers when he was a Minister. We need a definite plan and proposal for the adoption of private drains and sewers, and again, we need an audit so that we know where they are and who owns them. It comes as a bolt from the blue when householders find out that their drains are private. They often find out only because their drains are flooded. We need a deadline for that, and I hope that the Secretary of State will oblige.
	It is right that the water companies should adopt private drains and sewers and be made responsible for them, but regrettably the Secretary of State and the Department are completely wrong in their sums. I do not believe that the savings that they have estimated are accurate or that local authorities are currently paying out anything like the sums that they believe. We need to be grown-up and revisit that, and water companies need to be prepared and know exactly what they are in for.
	Pitt was extremely clear about the ending of the automatic right to connect. The regulations under planning policy statement 25, which a number of hon. Members have mentioned, cover building on flood plains. I believe that water companies should have the badge of statutory consultees, but also that their advice, like that of the Environment Agency, should be acted upon. There should be some comeback when a planning authority proceeds to ignore that advice, if water companies are adopted as statutory consultees under the Bill.
	To recap, I believe that water companies have a key role to play in sustainable urban drainage systems, planning changes to end the automatic right to connect and the adoption of private drains and sewers. I welcome the opening up of the tendering process to bodies other than water companies in clause 36, but I do not understand the logic of excluding water companies. I hope that the Secretary of State will review that.
	There have been a number of contributions about sustainable development, natural alleviation schemes of water retention and working with nature. I pay tribute to the pilot scheme that has been authorised in Pickering. I have aspirations to represent Pickering in a future Parliament, so it is particularly close to my heart. Other pilots have also been rolled out, including by the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe in his previous ministerial capacity. If the Pickering scheme is deemed to work, with mini-dams along the railway line, trees upstream and bottlenecks removed downstream, it will be a great way forward and other parts of the country will benefit.
	I have great sympathy with those who have said that river catchment area management needs to be examined more closely, and there is work that we can do on that. As regards the crucial role of the fire and rescue service and statutory responsibility, which the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and others mentioned, Pitt recommendation 39 was very clear that the Government should urgently put in place a fully funded national capability for flood rescue, with fire and rescue authorities playing a leading role, underpinned as necessary by a statutory duty. We are not quite there yet, and I hope that the Secretary of State sets out exactly where we are when he responds.
	The Bill's provisions for information sharing should be more specific. There should be much more access to the various mappings. I understand that the Secretary of State is prepared to open Ordnance Survey mappings, but what about those of the Met Office, the insurance industry, district councils and water companies? However, there should be a provision setting out confidentiality criteria-the confidentiality of anything that is commercially sensitive should be respected.
	Resource, funding and skills are causing great alarm-witness the contributions made this evening. We need to look again at what the balance between local government, local authorities, the Environment Agency and water companies should be. The Secretary of State is aware that I do not believe that either the Environment Agency or the local authorities can find the necessary resources from their existing funds. That matter is causing great concern, and I hope that he addresses it this evening.
	On resilience and the British Standards Institution's issuing of the kitemark, if a product is proved to be fit for purpose, will a householder or business property owner be able to sue the BSI or the product maker when a product allows water in? What comeback is there and how can we ensure that home owners and property owners in general have the confidence to increase their resilience? What happens if a product is demonstrated to be unfit for purpose? A great consensus is building on amending building regulations to increase resilience to future floods. It is not acceptable that home owners are returning to properties that still have electrical sockets at ground level. When a property is prone to future floods, that simply stores up more problems.
	The Government need to be much clearer what priorities there are between the arbitrary house building policy of one Department and DEFRA's guidance not to build in inappropriate places. The Secretary of State needs to be much clearer on the relationship between the Environment Agency's strategic overview and the regional spatial plans-my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) and others showed what future flooding problems there could be in their constituencies.
	On insurance, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) said in setting out the Conservative position at the beginning of the debate that there was a discrepancy between the £1 billion that the Government would be paying next year and the £1.5 billion for which the insurance industry is still calling. The Government need to address that, the need for accessible insurance for all, which the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) and others addressed, and the fact that premiums and excesses are going up. In my constituency, excesses are well in excess of £10,000. They need to be affordable; otherwise, the taxpayer is left with the cost of picking up uninsurable losses. I should like the Secretary of State to go further and to write a duty into the Bill-we have prepared a little amendment to help him in this regard-for the Environment Agency to come forward with an annual programme for maintenance, which will be reported to both Houses and debated, to ensure that it is at all times maintaining and dredging the main water courses, so that as long as internal drainage boards are doing their bit, the water does not back up.
	I should like to take credit for one measure. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs threatened to amend the so-called rain tax, but the Government have done so in clause 42. That was included only after the official Opposition persisted in saying that we would act if the Government failed to do so- [ Interruption. ] I am delighted that the House supports us.
	We still need a full audit of critical infrastructure. I deplore the fact that the flood risk regulations have gone through without proper scrutiny and, I understand, without proper consultation. With the reservation that several issues that have been raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House this evening are worthy of further debate in Committee, we wish the Bill a fair wind and we hope that it will be even better than it is now once it leaves Committee.

Hilary Benn: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I was generous in giving way to him earlier, and I want to try to respond to as many points as possible.
	Insurance is a problem, and we have to have an answer to it. On more precise flood warnings, we do not need legislation to do that. Indeed, as the capacity of the flood forecasting centre at the Met Office improves and gives better and more accurate flood warnings, the House may rest assured that those will be issued.
	I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall), who has played a significant role in highlighting the unfairness of surface water charges and gave some striking examples from his area concerning United Utilities. As for who will be covered, he will have seen clause 42(4)(c), and of course guidance will be issued as well.
	I hope that today was not the last time that the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) talks on such matters, because he has chaired the Select Committee with distinction, enormous insight and great courtesy. I echo his thanks to the staff of his Committee. I thought that he spoke particularly eloquently about the need to be straight with each other. That has been a theme in this debate, and I agree with it. On the floods directive, I can assure him that we will, when necessary, stitch the bits together so that if changes are made to the Bill, they can be reflected in the regulations. Bridges should certainly be regularly inspected. He also talked about informing members of the public. One of the striking things about this matter-this came across in Sir Michael Pitt's report-is that we all have a personal responsibility. When a flood warning is issued, it means something and we have to pay attention.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood reminded us that the internal drainage boards are good in some places, but not so good in others. Regional flood defence committees have an important role to play, and I agree with him completely. I liked his phrase about the environment acting as a sponge. He, too, said in respect of coastal erosion that we have to be honest with each other, and that includes everybody involved taking responsibility for the problem, because we cannot get into a situation where people start to say, "Well, the EA is the harbinger of doom and bringer of bad news." This is everyone's problem, and we all have to pitch in and do something about it.
	The hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) was kind in his expressions of appreciation. When it comes to building on floodplains, the responsibility is clear: it rests with the local planning authority. The question is whether we can guard against flood risk. Indeed, we meet and debate here on a floodplain that is protected by the Thames barrier. On alternative supplies, he will be aware that the Mythe defences have now been reinforced and that Walham has a flood defence. However, there is an alternative water supply, as we saw with the distribution of bottled water, which worked well. There were problems with the bowsers, but those were eventually sorted out.
	I know from the terrific constituency work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) that when he speaks about the importance of community consultation and involvement, he means it and lives it. I have seen that for myself through the great work done in his constituency dealing with contaminated land. The most striking thing about that was getting people involved. That is another aspect of sharing responsibility. If we say, "Hey, we've got a problem. What are we going to do about it?", people tend to respond, as he knows well. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) made exactly the same point. On insurance, we need ideas and to think about it, and my right hon. Friend made a powerful point about affordability.
	The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) was right to talk about prevention. I say to her what I said to the Opposition spokesman. The Bill has the flexibility to enable local authorities to work together in a way that will suit them. In the end, it is up to the local authorities to enter into the spirit of that flexible provision in the Bill and to make it happen.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) asked about training for fire service staff. We have offered assistance with physical material by ensuring that the right training is in place. He is right to say that those who are putting their lives at risk should have the right equipment and knowledge to undertake their important work.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) talked about the need for a better understanding of risks and local warnings. Better technology will allow that. He is also right to say that we will have to think about bridge design, especially in the light of experiences in Cumbria. The right hon. Member for Fylde made this point as well, and the natural hazards team is looking at that very question.
	I pay tribute to the role that my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr. Reed) has played in the current difficult circumstances, as well as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham), who really has been at the sharp end and has been quite magnificent. My hon. Friend the Member for Copeland made a powerful case for accountability. Let me assure him that the water companies will be under a duty to act consistently with the national flood strategy. They will be required to co-operate with flood risk authorities, and the Secretary of State will be able to direct water companies or other authorities to carry out flood risk management functions if they fail to do so themselves.
	The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) has more reason that just about anybody in the Chamber to be concerned about coastal erosion and rising sea levels. It is not a question of the EA trying to frighten anybody; there is a problem and we have to share it. The important point is the spirit in which that is entered into.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) talked about the Walker review. She is a powerful advocate for her constituents in the south-west and chairs the all-party group on water with great energy. She raised the question of arrears, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe, and if she is on the Committee, I suspect that it will be returned to.
	I was glad to hear what the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) said about the change that had taken place, because that was where a different approach had been adopted. We will make provisions for appeals, through the relevant provisions in clauses 38 and 39, based on existing provisions in the Water Resources Act 1991.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) chairs the all-party group on flood prevention, also with distinction. I agree with him about regional flood defence committees. As for water companies and sustainable drainage systems, the body giving the approval should also have the responsibility to maintain, because that will make it think about the decision. However, water companies will also be statutory consultees.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud talked about riparian owners. Assets will be registered under clause 21, which will enable the lead local flood authority to identify the cause of a problem and speed its resolution, should it arise. On the choices that have to be made, they will be a combination of collective defence, where possible, and greater resistance and resilience, but also individuals thinking about how they can protect the properties in which they live.
	I pay tribute to the careful interest that the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) takes in these matters and the expertise with which she contributed from the Dispatch Box this evening. On the expenses faced by local authorities, as she will be aware, there is support under the Bellwin arrangements, which we have again extended to 100 per cent. cover above the threshold, as we did in 2007. There is also other support available, through various different schemes. On the role of the Environment Agency, I would simply say to her that-how shall I put it?-when it comes to responsibility, one person's prescription is another person's clarity. The Bill is right to make it clear where the EA has responsibilities. The SUDS definition is the same north and south of the border, and existing SUDS are likely to be designated under clause 30 and schedule 1.
	Finally, I want to come back to the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, who speaks for the Opposition. This is a week in which the world's leaders have been gathering in Copenhagen to try to bring home an agreement, which is essential if we are to deal with the consequences of a changing climate, one of which-flooding-we have been talking about this evening. This is a world in which we will have to live within our means. That includes nature's ability to accommodate human beings-our settlement and our activity-and we will have to do that with due respect for nature's power. What we are doing this evening represents a really important step towards helping the people who have been so badly affected by flooding in recent times. I commend the Bill to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Peter Hain: In this case, we have seen how detailed scrutiny-undertaken primarily by this Parliament, either in this House or through the Welsh Affairs Committee-has improved a draft piece of legislation that would not otherwise have been in such good shape. That is the way I would respond to the hon. Gentleman's question.
	The Government's approach to this LCO has been informed by four principles. The first is that it is logical and appropriate for the National Assembly for Wales to be able to legislate on the Welsh language. The nation's legislature is surely the natural home for making laws in relation to the language.
	The second principle is that the order builds on the firm foundations of the Welsh Language Act 1993. That landmark legislation ensured that organisations providing services of a public nature implement schemes for carrying out some or all of their business in Welsh. These requirements now need updating better to fit new times, but the 1993 Act provides a sound basis for the focus of the LCO on key public services provided by public authorities or private companies.
	Thirdly, it is crucially important that as we move forward, we strike the right balance between the interests of those who use Welsh as their mother tongue and who wish to conduct their day-to-day business in the language and the large majority of people in Wales-some 80 per cent.-who do not speak Welsh.
	The final principle is that any duty should be applied in a reasonable and proportionate way. This is the key point made by the Welsh Affairs Committee and it has my full support. This is particularly important in the context of ensuring that business and enterprise in Wales support these proposals. No one would want to see the private sector discouraged from investing in Wales because of burdensome Welsh language duties being inappropriately imposed on business. What is right in respect of a large public authority need not necessarily be right for a smaller private sector company. What is right in Meirionnydd may not be right for Monmouthshire.
	There has been a great deal of consultation on these proposals. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) sought the views of interested parties on the proposed order earlier this year, and I am grateful to him as he paved the way for the consensus that has now been built. The Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) and I have held discussions with a large number of organisations-and their representative bodies-that may be affected by subsequent Assembly measures. This engagement has been vital in helping to frame the draft LCO before us this evening.
	This LCO, then, is built on firm and clear principles. It is grounded in a common- sense approach to developing the language and, in drafting it, we have responded to the very real concerns of some about its scope while at the same time meeting the pressures for change. I believe it gets right the intricate balance of interests that hon. Members will know the Welsh language engages; it builds a broad consensus on how to proceed and it works in the best interests of everyone in Wales.
	The draft LCO would enable the National Assembly to legislate to promote or facilitate the use of the Welsh language and the treatment of the Welsh and English languages on a basis of equality. This is based on the wording from the Welsh Language Act 1993. It does not extend to the use of Welsh in the courts; nor would it allow the National Assembly to impose duties in relation to the Welsh language on any body other than those falling within the 10 categories listed in the order. These categories include public authorities; bodies established for specified purposes by royal charter; bodies receiving public money amounting to £400,000 or more in a financial year; and organisations providing key public services, including electricity, gas, water, post, telecoms, bus and rail services.
	The LCO includes a crucial safeguard enabling bodies in these categories to challenge the imposition of Welsh language duties on grounds of reasonableness and proportionality. This is a robust safeguard against any inappropriate imposition of such duties. It ensures that the reasonableness of duties will be a key consideration in developing Assembly measures, and provides an important reassurance against disproportionate obligations being imposed on any body, and especially smaller organisations, whether they be charities or companies in business sectors such as mobile telephony or energy.
	I believe this LCO puts in place a framework for the devolution of powers over the Welsh language to the Assembly, which is robust and provides for a strong and healthy future for the language by building on the achievements since 1993 in a common-sense, evolutionary way to make the language a source of pride for everyone in Wales, whether or not they speak Welsh. I commend it to the House.

Cheryl Gillan: I have to say that on this occasion I agree with the Secretary of State. I think it important for LCOs to be properly scrutinised in this place. As the Order Paper makes clear, this is a constitutional matter, and it is right for it to be debated on the Floor of the House.
	I think it important to give some thought to what it means to say that the passing down of a power is "appropriate". Of course, nothing seems more immediately appropriate than passing power over the Welsh language to the Welsh Assembly. The Assembly is certainly capable of exercising that power, and it is an elected body, just as the House of Commons is. I would argue, however, that what we mean by "appropriate" in this case is not whether the Assembly can do the job, but whether it makes more sense to legislate on this matter at a Welsh level in the Assembly or at a national level in Parliament.
	As the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) once observed, and as I believe has been observed by the Secretary of State himself, it would be inappropriate to rubber-stamp the passing down of power to legislate on matters which, without proper scrutiny, could have unintended consequences. I have always believed that, and it has been the case with this LCO. As my grandmother used to say, two heads are better than one. I think that this extra scrutiny is welcome, and that it has improved the LCO greatly. It is entirely proper that, when deciding whether it is appropriate to pass down powers, we should pay careful attention to the scope of LCOs and their possible implications for the people of Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom.
	I disagree with the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), who appears to have left the Chamber immediately after his intervention, and also with Lord Elis-Thomas, who said that legislative proposals for the Assembly should be passed automatically. I do not believe that that is the right thing to do.
	Let me turn to the detail of the order. It has certainly been greatly improved since its first draft. I pay tribute to the work of the Select Committee and its Chairman, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis). It is clear that the system places a considerable burden on the Committee, and it is testimony to the dedication of all its members in all parties that they managed to do such a good job despite their immense work load. However, there are still a number of issues that I want to raise. I hope that the Secretary of State, or the Minister, can provide clarification or reassurance both for myself and for those who have raised matters with me.
	The first issue is the future of the Welsh Language Board. It has been doing a first-class job in promoting the language under Meri Huws, yet no one seems to have raised what will happen to it and to the jobs involved, and I know that it was not consulted in an appropriate fashion before the LCO was promulgated by the coalition Assembly Government. I hope that the Minister will be able to shine some light on its future.
	The order applies to a number of bodies outside the public sector and thus outside the scope of the Welsh Language Act 1993, including gas, electricity, water and telecoms providers. I appreciate that the intention is to allow the people in Wales to live their lives in the language of their choice, and I, too, support that aim, yet many of these companies already have some form of language scheme. The comment I have heard most often from such companies is that take-up is severely limited. For example, Wales  West Utilities Ltd identified that over the three years of operation between 2006 and 2009, in 600,000 calls to its hotline only four requests were made to converse in Welsh. Also, of 152,000 pieces of correspondence generated annually, only two requests for Welsh correspondence have been received. Surely the energies of government would be better used in encouraging private companies to adopt Welsh language schemes voluntarily than in legislating further.

Mark Williams: It is a genuine pleasure to take part in this debate tonight, albeit that it is late in the day. However, I think that it is right to say that in many quarters there will be a palpable sigh of relief that the order in its final form is now before us.
	Some outside this place have condemned the presence of this business on the Order Paper today and in particular the last session of the Welsh Grand Committee as deliberate attempts at delay and prevarication. I do not believe that that is the case. I believe that what the Secretary of State said was true-he has just about succeeded, judging by the turn-out this evening-and that there was a conscious effort to ensure that there was the widest possible consultation on a matter that could be emotive and sensitive and that is very important. I hope that there will be approval by the end of the debate, too, although I hesitate to say that after the last speech.
	Tonight's debate is not about the merits of the LCO process. It is about transferring powers to our Assembly, at its request, and using the LCO process to achieve it. I can think of no other area of policy where there is such a strong moral case. I am proud to be a member of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, and our Chairman, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), is always at great pains when we scrutinise all LCOs to ensure that we do not stray into the realms of Measures that the Assembly might introduce. The irony in this process was that some of the most strident supporters of the order were telling us on the one hand to keep our noses out, as we should, and to respect the integrity of the Assembly to introduce what Measures it wants, but on the other to include certain facets in the order. Under the chairmanship of the hon. Gentleman, we resisted.
	Welsh is the first language of more than half the population in Ceredigion and its use is heard across Wales, as we will no doubt hear later on, including in the more anglicised parts. Linguistic Welsh language education policy based on choice is working, and it is working well. More than 40 per cent. of three to 15-year-olds have an understanding and practical use of the language in our schools, compared with about 20 per cent. of the over-45s. It is a success story that is moving forward. That growth among the young is, I believe, the greatest motivation for the order to proceed and for Measures to follow, so that the growing number of Welsh speakers can access services in the language of their choice. That principle is as valid for the children who I used to teach in my primary school a few miles from the English border as it is for my children, who are learning and speaking Welsh in a category A school in Y Fro Gymraeg in our village in Ceredigion. It transcends the whole country.
	The jigsaw needs to fit together and the Assembly rightly wishes to acquire the capacity to fill the holes left by the passage of time since the Welsh Language Act 1993 and to advance the cause of true bilingualism. Like the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), I commend the work of Lord Roberts of Conwy in 1993 and praise the constructive way that the Assembly Minister has approached the order as well as the work of one of his predecessors-one of my party colleagues, Mrs. Jenny Randerson-who did much to initiate and promote Iaith Pawb under her watch.
	We have the system that we have, and of course some of us would welcome an even broader transfer of powers, but the order is none the less welcome. The scrutiny has been immensely worthwhile. It has brought us a much improved order, in particular because of the introduction of the concept of proportionality and reasonableness. I believe that many of the sceptics have been reassured. I welcome the increase in the threshold to £400,000. It gives a more reasonable basis on which we can move forward in the future. There was a question mark over whether there should be an arbitrary threshold, and whether it was the right way forward. This figure is certainly an improvement on that of £200,000. I welcome also the disapplication of those in receipt of one-off payments. That, too, made great sense.
	Now in particular, at the end of the process and despite what we heard earlier, I want to welcome the response from the business community. I remember a very difficult meeting of the Federation of Small Businesses in my constituency, where I tried to justify the original order to a very sceptical audience, concerned at the perceived added costs during the recession. It was heartening that in the evidence that people from the FSB gave to our Committee, they said that they felt reassured by the assurances given to them by the Minister for Heritage in the Assembly, and it was especially heartening to see the response of the CBI. Its initial evidence to us showed that it was sceptical and concerned about the implications but, at the end of the process, it has said publicly that
	it is significant that this...proportionality and reasonableness
	element
	has now been written on to the face of the bill.
	It is happy with the legislation and wants it to proceed, and I think that many of us wish to proceed on a positive note.
	All parties-most parties; I should qualify that-have worked well to arrive at where we are now. The Chairman of our Select Committee ensured that we reached consensus. There was consensus in the Welsh Grand Committee, and I hope that there will be consensus tonight. Liberal Democrats are confident that the order will give the Assembly the tools that it needs to develop the next stage of Welsh language provision, and I am happy to offer the order my party's support, although I still look forward to the day when the Assembly exercises even greater autonomy, unfettered by this place.

Hywel Francis: It is not strange at all; it is perfectly straightforward. As it happens, that was the way in which we achieved unanimity in the Committee.
	It is also a significant achievement that an order that was originally perceived as controversial has, in its revised form, secured cross-party support. I feel that that was achieved as a consequence of listening carefully to all sectors of Welsh society. The support was unanimous, which no one could have predicted.
	The Committee made the important point that while language legislation is a fundamental part of ensuring that the Welsh language continues to thrive, it is far from the whole picture. That was demonstrated by the evidence that we took during our inquiry including, crucially, from the Catalan Government, who have a long experience of language law. The Catalan witnesses clearly felt that legal sanctions were secondary to the development of a positive culture of acceptance of and support for the language-we are now at that point in Wales. Compulsion and enforcement need to be secondary to a continuation of a consensual progress and should be used only as a last resort. Clarity of expectation, as reflected in legislation, should be the primary route for further progress, and I believe that the order fulfils that aim well.
	Hon. Members representing all the major parties and rural, urban and valley constituencies listened and responded to the concerns, aspirations and, most of all, the united pride in our language expressed by Welsh speakers and non-Welsh speakers. That was the key to our success, and the success of the LCO is that it has not proved to be divisive but has unified Wales and the Welsh people in its support.
	Only today, I received an email from the senior public affairs executive of E.ON UK plc, in which she said:
	We welcome the changes to the LCO following debate in both Westminster and Cardiff. We believe that removing energy generators from the scope of the LCO was appropriate, given that generators provide no direct service to customers. We also welcome the introduction of the 'reasonableness and proportionality' clause.
	Against that background of unity, I would simply say to the House tonight, Rrhowch eich cefnogaeth i'r Iaith Gymraeg heno.
	I urge the House therefore, as Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, to give this legislative competence order, its full support tonight. As the Abercraf miners' banner proclaims, in the colours of the African National Congress,
	mewn undeb mae nerth a heddwch-
	in unity there is strength and peace.

Don Touhig: May I echo the sentiments expressed by colleagues across the House in sending our sympathy to the First Minister on his loss? Our thoughts and prayers will be with him and his family. May I also echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) in paying tribute to the retiring First Minister, who has been an exceptional First Minister for the whole of Wales for the last 10 years.
	I welcome this debate and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on bringing this matter to the Floor of the House of Commons. It is right that this legislative competence order should come here, because tonight we are changing the constitution, and that should be a matter for the whole House of Commons. Indeed, this matter is listed on the Order Paper as constitutional law.
	We are changing the constitution because the Government of Wales Act 2006 specifically allows us to do so by use of LCOs. I hope that in future all Welsh LCOs that will be brought forward under this Act will come to the House in this way. Nobody here or in Wales should have any concerns about this form of scrutiny. We are, after all, changing the constitutional relationship between this sovereign Parliament and the devolved Welsh Assembly.
	If we pass this LCO tonight, as I believe we will, we will pass to the Assembly the competence to make primary legislation on matters relating to the Welsh language. I approve of that, because the National Assembly for Wales is the right place to make such legislation. By bringing this matter to the Floor of the House the Government are avoiding the charge of devolution by stealth-a charge that I have laid at their door many times in the past when these LCOs have been taken upstairs in Committee, not down here. I take the view, as I did as deputy to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, that changes to the devolution settlement that affect the constitution should be debated in this House and, if necessary, voted on by this House. I hope that in future all LCOs relating to Wales will be brought here in this way.
	This LCO, concerning legislative powers over the Welsh language, has the potential to divide Wales. I am not entirely convinced by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis) that this has united Wales, because-if we are honest-debates on the Welsh language have tended to divide opinion in Wales in the past, not unite it. That may be sad, but that is how it is. In the case of this LCO, there has been wide concern that the measures that will follow giving the Assembly the right to make secondary legislation will in some way discriminate against the 80 per cent. of our people who are not bilingual. Many of those concerns have been assuaged by the extensive consultation on this LCO that was launched by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen when he was Secretary of State. The work of the Welsh Affairs Committee and the Committee of the National Assembly in taking evidence has helped to reframe this LCO so that it has been more warmly welcomed across Wales. I think that this consultation is the right way to go.
	I cannot see why any Assembly Minister or Member should fear open and transparent consideration of a matter that will affect every man, woman, child, business and industry in Wales. When I first heard about this LCO, I was concerned that the measure would have some adverse effect on business, industry and non-bilingual people in Wales. The Assembly has the right to make secondary legislation-in other words, to put meat on the bones of the order-when the power is passed to it. I consulted widely in my constituency and beyond, and talked to businesses, trade organisations, training providers and charities, all of which were seeking to express their concerns and worries about the use of the LCO.
	I discussed the matter with colleagues and Ministers, including in the Assembly, and I know that many others did the same. We were not helped at the outset by what I must describe as a paranoid approach by some in the Assembly who seemed to go out of their way to refuse to give any indication of what might happen when they receive the power from Parliament and of how it might be operated. That was wholly unhelpful to the kind of discussions that we had in the beginning, and there is no doubt that the work of the Welsh Affairs Committee, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon, made a big difference there. Great credit must be given to it.
	I recall that, when I was a Wales Office Minister, when matters affecting Welsh legislation came before Parliament, I often exchanged letters with the relevant Assembly Minister. That exchange would then be made public without in any way interfering with the Assembly's right to make secondary legislation. Very often, those letters and that information enabled people in this place to better understand what would be done with the legislation when the relevant powers were passed to Cardiff. I commend that approach. I cannot think of anything better, but if anyone else can, I hope that they will pursue it, because that is the right way to pursue such matters. At the end of the day, however, we must leave the Assembly with the right to make secondary legislation.
	The Assembly, as an institution, will demonstrate its maturity when all its Members-not just some of them-and some of its Ministers too, get a little less worked up about the kind of scrutiny in which we in this place, under our constitutional settlement, are rightly allowed to participate. It makes for better legislation, and I believe that we are proving that tonight.

Mark Williams: I should like to present a petition of 70 residents from the Ceredigion constituency, which has been organised by the Clarke family of Drefach, on the Badman report. Given the lateness of the hour, I shall not refer to the report as that has been done many times.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of persons resident in the Ceredigion parliamentary constituency,
	Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people's homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000644]

David Anderson: I, too, wish to present a petition on the Badman report, on behalf of Julie Taylor and others from the Blaydon constituency who wish to express the genuine concerns about the report. They specifically request the Secretary of State to withdraw or not bring forward the various measures set out in the report. I am grateful for the opportunity to present this petition tonight.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of persons resident in the Blaydon parliamentary constituency,
	Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people's homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000643]

Robert Goodwill: I, too, rise to present a petition on the Badman report, which has been signed by 42 of my constituents in the same terms as were so ably read out by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath).
	The petition states:
	The Petition of persons resident in Scarborough and Whitby parliamentary constituency,
	Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration scheme and right of access to people's homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000641]

James Brokenshire: I am grateful for the opportunity, even at this late hour tonight, to highlight my concerns and those of my constituents about the impact of flight noise, and the increase in the number of flights, from London City airport. It is also a pleasure to debate again with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Gillingham (Paul Clark), on a transport-related matter and I look forward to hearing his response in due course.
	In the past 10 years, the number of air transport movements at London City airport has doubled, from just under 21,000 aircraft departures in 1999 to some 42,000 departures in 2008. We are about to see a further significant shift in the use of the airport. The London borough of Newham has now granted the airport permission to increase the number of flight movements by 50 per cent. The flights permission would increase from 80,000 to 120,000 movements a year. London City airport forecasts that it will handle up to 3.9 million passengers by 2010, and there are long-term plans to accommodate up to 8 million passengers by 2030. That potentially significant change in the scale and nature of the operations at the airport has gone largely unnoticed by many people.
	This is not simply about the number of landings and departures; it is also about the flight paths that the aircraft will take. Last year, NATS consulted on wide-ranging proposals for the busy airspace above the south-east of England known as terminal control north. The plans covered all London airports, with modifications to landing and departure routings and holding points. In the case of London City airport, one of the proposed changes was to alter the northerly departure routing. Instead of aircraft taking a sharp northerly turn almost immediately after take-off and, thus, over Woodford and Chingford, they were instead intended to take a flight path to the north-east over my constituency in Hornchurch.
	In September 2008, I received a letter from the head of external communications at NATS stating that there would be a longer time period for consideration of the consultation, as further options were being considered, including in respect of London City departures over north London. It stated that
	work is ongoing and further design options and suggestions are being evaluated,
	adding that
	we have not set a timetable for the next steps on the TCN proposal.
	In response to a further inquiry from me about the nature of the revised options being considered for London City, I received a letter on 2 December 2008 stating that a number of options for the wider terminal control north area were being considered and that
	there may well be a requirement for further consultation on any proposals that are brought forward, should they be significantly different to those on which we have already consulted.
	It was therefore with some shock and surprise that I discovered several months after the event that on 8 January this year NATS submitted a formal airspace change proposal to the Civil Aviation Authority to alter the London City airport standard instrument departure routes, including the change to route more aircraft over my constituency. Ian Hall, the director of operations for NATS, was quoted in the accompanying press release as saying:
	These changes to the turn were proposed in the TCN consultation and are necessary to formalise the departure procedures for all aircraft using London City and will be an added safety benefit. It is a change we can achieve quickly and the CAA is keen that we do so.
	I was subsequently informed in a letter from NATS that the CAA required it to expedite an airspace change proposal and that is self-evident when one reads the CAA decision letter of 20 February 2009. The letter stated that the changes were deemed by the CAA to be necessary to accommodate an increase in category C aircraft using the airport rather than following the STOLport configuration-or short take-off and landing airport configuration-that had originally been envisaged. In his decision letter, the then director of airspace policy at the CAA, John Arscott, stated that:
	As part of the TC North development briefings, my head of Controlled Airspace advised NATS that a re-design of conventional LCY SIDs-
	that is, London City standards instrument departures-
	to meet CAT C design criteria was required at the earliest opportunity and it was subsequently agreed that these re-designed SIDs should be incorporated within the TC North development project.
	He went on to say:
	Following on from the TC North consultation, with the ongoing NATS evaluation of the TC North consultation feedback and a potential lengthy delay to eventual implementation, I decided that the LCY SID changes to bring conventional procedures up to CAT C design criteria could not be delayed any further; therefore, NATS was requested to submit a change proposal to bring the SID designs up to CAA and ICAO CAT C design requirements at the earliest opportunity.
	It is interesting to note that that was virtually the last decision Mr. Arscott took as his term of office came to an end a week later on 1 March 2009.
	So, in essence the terminal control north consultation as far as London City was concerned was potentially meaningless-one could say that it was a sham. The CAA had predetermined that change was necessary. I find that unacceptable and believe that I-along with my constituents-was given a completely false impression when the TCN consultation was initiated. The changes were brought into effect in May and are already starting to have an impact.
	Both easterly and westerly departures from London City airport to the north that previously took a sharp turn following take-off are now being directed over my constituency following a similar track to the initial route adopted for north-easterly and southerly departures from the airport. Based on the 2009 usage rates published in the original TCN consultation, that will in future result in a near 50 per cent. increase in the number of departing aircraft overhead in my constituency from London City airport.
	Although the CAA might have requirements to bring London City operations into compliance with CAA and International Civil Aviation Organisation design criteria for category C departures, that does not mean that my constituents should be forced to bear the brunt of the noise and environmental impact. Aircraft will be passing overhead at between 2,000 and 3,000 feet with a typical noise level of 57 to 72 dB and potentially up to 77 dB for BAE 146 or RJ aircraft. The CAA decision letter accepts that residents will experience additional aircraft noise. Having read that letter, I am left with the impression that the TCN proposals, so far as they affected London City, were a done deal, and that the consultation undertaken was effectively meaningless.
	This comes on top of the Newham council decision to approve an increase in the number of flight movements at London City by 50 per cent.-from 80,000 movements to 120,000. The combined impact of the changes to the London City departure routings and the proposed increase in flights would, in essence, lead to a doubling of the number of departing aircraft over my Hornchurch constituency. That will have a noticeable and significant impact on environmental amenity for my constituents. The double-whammy effect was never communicated or consulted on; again, I find that utterly unacceptable.
	It is not just me, however. Significant questions are now being raised by neighbouring boroughs about the nature of the consultation conducted by the London borough of Newham in relation to approving the increase in flight movements. The London borough of Redbridge passed an uncontested resolution in November condemning the failure to consult it on the expansion of London City airport, and opposing further expansion at the airport or changes to the flight paths or modes of operation at the airport that would result in an increase in aircraft noise suffered by local residents. If my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott) was in the Chamber, he would want to refer to that resolution because he has taken a close interest in the issue. However, it is not just Redbridge. I understand that motions in similar terms have also been approved by the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.
	London City airport is consulting on its draft strategic noise action plan. The draft plan will have to be submitted to the Secretary of State for Transport early next year for consideration before formal adoption under the European environmental noise directive. I urge the Secretary of State not to accept the plan unless the significant complaints and concerns that I have raised in the debate have been properly addressed, particularly the significant impact that residents in east and north-east London will suffer due to departing aircraft from London City as a consequence of the flight routing changes. There should be a consideration of changes to routings, when appropriate, and discussions with both the CAA and NATS, when necessary, so that my constituents are not forced to bear the brunt of what I consider to be a fundamentally flawed notification and consultation procedure on two fronts.
	Will the Minister make urgent representations to both the CAA and NATS about the nature of their general approach to consultation? The case raises serious and significant issues, and if their approach is simply to go through the motions by carrying out consultation on a done deal, that is utterly acceptable.
	I also urge the Minister to instruct NATS and the CAA to go back to the drawing board, reassess the departure routings from London City, and come back with revised proposals as part of the next round of consultation under the TCN proposals. It is worth making the point that London City was specifically stripped out of the TCN. All the other proposals are still subject to further consideration and public consultation. Regardless of what the CAA might say, it is odd that London City was stripped out in such a way when everyone was under the impression that the TCN proposals were still being considered and would be the subject of further consultation.
	Given the circumstances of such a significant change and its combined effect with the general increase in flight movements, and the impact that that will have on areas such as Hornchurch, I believe that the regulators have a duty to look again at the damaging proposals that are being fast-tracked through. While there might be arguments for increasing London City's capacity, they need to be balanced against the impact of additional disruption due to noise. I object that my constituents will bear the brunt of the environmental downside without any clear upside, that they are told that they have a voice in a consultation when they are given only a partial picture of the true scale of changes and that, in any event, their views would apparently simply be regarded as irrelevant.
	In Hornchurch, we are lucky to have the benefit of significant environmental amenities. We have a significant amount of green space, with a number of large parks and sites of significant scientific interest. Their enjoyment will be adversely affected by these changes.
	I would therefore urge the Minister to use his influence to ensure that those agencies with responsibility for the planning of our flight paths look again at the design of the northerly routings from London City airport. They should look again at the serious environmental impact of their decisions, and be held properly accountable for their actions to my constituents and the residents of other affected areas.

Paul Clark: At the outset, may I congratulate the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) on securing this debate. I am delighted to face him again and to have a further discussion on transport issues.
	Our commitment to sustaining economic growth and protecting the environment is at the very heart of the Department's aviation policy-making process. With specific regard to smaller airports such as London City airport, the Government's 2003 White Paper The Future of Air Transport noted that regional and local planning authorities
	should take account of the benefits that development at the smaller airports could provide, and consider policies which facilitate the delivery of growth
	and opportunities at these airports. However, I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will agree that hard decisions have to be taken to strike a balance between tackling the environmental challenges, enabling people to fly and allowing the industry to compete internationally. Tensions will always arise in such matters, of course, but it is about getting the balance right.
	The hon. Gentleman raised a number of issues regarding recent changes at London City airport and I am keen to deal with them. I shall begin with Newham council's decision to grant planning permission for London City airport to increase by some 50 per cent. the total number of air traffic transport movements from 80,000 to 120,000 per year, and the impact that that might have on local residents.
	The decision to grant that planning consent was entirely a matter for the London borough of Newham. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who knows the position of his own Front-Bench team when it comes to the decision-making process at a local level, will agree with that. Expansion of the airport is consistent with the Government's view that there is considerable potential for airports like London City to grow, and the airport is well placed to serve a niche business market.

James Brokenshire: I appreciate the Minister's generosity in giving way. As I understand it, he has said that the CAA makes the decision whether there is an environmental aspect that should be referred to the Secretary of State. The CAA appears to be the judge and the decision-maker on that. Is there any route whereby the Secretary of State could call in for consideration a proposed change in routing? It seems strange that the CAA can, in effect, require NATS to implement a change and decide on the environmental aspects itself.

Paul Clark: As I have indicated, the Secretary of State vests that power in the independent regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, but it has to make those considerations in conjunction with the guidance-particularly on the environmental side-that is laid out in conjunction with the Government's policy.
	I shall now turn specifically to the environmental impact of the recent changes to London City airport. I recognise that the levels of aircraft noise and air quality, and the visual impact on the hon. Gentleman's constituents, will of course be of concern. I understand that point, and that is why I said right at the beginning of my remarks that getting the balance right is a judgment that has to be made.
	The CAA's guidance on the airspace change process includes substantive guidance on a range of environmental requirements, including noise, air quality, tranquillity and visual intrusion. With regard to noise issues at London City airport, the hon. Gentleman will recall from my answer to his recent parliamentary question that responsibility for monitoring noise levels of aircraft at the airport falls to the airport operator. There are no statutory governmental noise controls like those that apply to Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports. However, under the terms of local monitoring agreements with the London borough of Newham, London City is required to produce annual noise contours.
	Given that the airport is in the city centre and in close proximity to residential areas, it imposes stringent noise control measures that are designed to mitigate its local environmental impact. Those measures incorporate strict restrictions on opening hours, including a ban on night flights. In addition, the airport produces annual contours, whereby the noise levels at the airport are monitored by a noise and track-keeping system. Further, London City airport's noise insulation scheme has the lowest trigger of any airport in the UK. In developing an insulation scheme to reflect the local circumstance, the airport, I am encouraged to note, is able to set criteria so that properties within the 57 dBA contour can be considered for insulation. The hon. Gentleman will know that that goes beyond the recommended level of 66 dBA in the air transport White Paper.
	In terms of noise, there are future initiatives and two key developments. The first relates to the proposed expansion of the airport. The planning conditions imposed as part of Newham borough council's planning consent requires the airport to develop an improved noise monitoring and mitigation strategy. That is expected to include the replacement of the existing noise and track-keeping system and improvements to the noise insulation schemes.
	The second initiative relates to the requirement for the airport to prepare a strategic noise action plan under the European environmental noise directive. Under the terms of that directive, the airport is required to develop a draft action plan in consultation with the local community. The airport is conducting a public consultation on its draft noise action plan, and, as the hon. Gentleman rightly points out on his website, the closing date is 15 January. He encourages everyone to participate in it, and that is absolutely commendable.
	The consultation process is a valuable opportunity for the airport to work closely with its neighbouring communities in developing control measures that will apply over the next five years. The neighbouring communities are clearly important. Once the airport has completed its consultation and considered the responses, it will be required to submit the final draft plan to the Government so that it can be considered for formal adoption under the directive.
	The airport is very aware of its local impact and seeks to ensure that local people see the benefit of living near an airport. The growth of the airport has encouraged businesses, investors and developers to locate in east London, bringing new services and facilities to the area.
	Let me turn finally to TC North. TC North is one of the most complex pieces of airspace in the world, with routes in and out of the major airports of Heathrow, Stansted, Luton and London City. I must stress that the TC North proposals are not associated with, and do not assume, future development at Heathrow, Stansted or any other airport. As the hon. Gentleman said, the London City airport SID proposals originally formed part of the TC North consultation on a package of measures designed to reduce delay, maintain safety and improve environmental performance. That consultation on TC North was the largest of its kind undertaken; the population in the region affected is just under 13 million.
	NATS directly consulted over 3,000 primary stakeholders, including MPs, county, borough, district and parish councils, environmental organisations and chambers of commerce. Before the launch of the consultation, NATS arranged briefings for local MPs and national and regional media. In response to concerns that there was not enough time to consider the details of the proposals, NATS extended the consultation period by four weeks, giving a full 17-week consultation period. Following that, NATS decided to review the TC North design options further. However, any revised designs for the TC North region are unlikely to be ready for consultation before autumn next year.
	The CAA considered that further consultation on the London City airport SID proposals was not needed-
	 House adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 9(7)).